Windows 10 April Update bug series: Fix Explorer crashes

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windows 10 april update explorer crashes

Everyone was excited to finally get the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, but all that excitement quickly disappeared with the various issues that popped up in the update. The known problems vary in severity, and one of the latest issues is pretty significant.

A flaw in Timeline new features causes Explorer.ext to crash the system

Reddit users have been talking about a problem involving Explorer.exe. It seems to crash every 3 to 5 seconds, and it makes the users’ systems unable to be used. According to Reddit users, the issue seems to be somehow related to the new Timeline feature. It occurs when Timeline syncs user activity to the cloud.

Available workarounds

According to Reddit users, there are currently three viable solutions available. Here’s the first solution as described by a Reddit user:

Meanwhile, there is a temporary solution that you can use to fix this problem. Go to Settings > Privacy > Activity History > uncheck the option “Let Windows sync my activities from this PC to the cloud.“ Once you’ve done this, switch to another Settings page, and then return to the previous one. Go to “Clear Activity History” and hit the “Clear” button. Explorer.exe should stop crashing now.

Another user describes the second solution:

I had the same thing happen to a client’s computer. Eventually what fixed it was renaming “C:Users<username>AppDataLocalMicrosoftWindows1033StructuredQuerySchema.bin” to something else, e.g., StructuredQuerySchema.bin.old, and then rebooting.

And eventually, the third solution seems to be disabling the TimeLine feature:

In hklmsoftwarepoliciesmicrosoftwindowssystem the key “enableactivityfeed” needed changing to zero to disable the timeline feature. I guess when it gets synced across builds in rs4/5 builds this can happen and create the havoc seen.

Other users said that they have tried disabling Activity History, deleting StructuredQuerySchema.bin and setting the enableactivityfeed registry setting, but this did not help at all. Neither did trying to disable the ‘Connected User Experiences and Telemetry’ (CDPUserSvc) service.

If you are experiencing the Explorer.exe crashing as well, stick to the three solutions described above, because they seem to work.

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More about the topics: Windows 10 April Update, windows 10 fix