It was patch Tuesday time, and we were implementing the Windows 10 1909 Oct October 12, 2021—KB5006667 (OS Build 18363.1854) patch to our base images which are used for VMware Horizon VDI. During our validations, we started noticing the strange behaviour of Explorer.exe crashing and desktop becoming completely unusable.
Update 16th Nov 2021 – The explorer.exe crashing issue is now resolved in November 9, 2021—KB5007189 (OS Build 18362.1916) (microsoft.com)
Issue
The Windows explorer.exe keeps crashing within the virtual desktop of Windows 10 1909. The virtual desktop is entirely unusable. The only way to see the Event Viewer or anything is by using Horizon Client – Options – Send Ctrl + Alt + Del command within the virtual desktop and then opening up the Task Manager.
Cause
Provided by Microsoft – The explorer is trying to update feeds content, and there is a NULL value due to this bug that is causing explorer to crash.
Resolution
We tried performing various steps of un-install and re-installing the patch etc.. However, nothing worked, and we ended up working with Microsoft and seemed like it was a known issue, and they provided us with the following fix:
Option 1 – Registry – Disable News and Interest
Open regedit.exe on the golden image or
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds\
REG_DWORD name: ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode
Value: 2
Option 2 – GPO – Disable News and Interest
To access the policy for news and interests on the taskbar, on a device that has installed Administrative Templates (.admx) for Windows 10 October 2020 Update (20H2) – v2.0 ADMX file Feeds.admx is newly added, and we can retrieve it from the below .admx file:
Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests > News and interests on the taskbar > Select Disabled
Note – I suspect this fix might be applicable to other Windows 10 versions.
I hope you will find these steps helpful to resolve explorer.exe crashing issue and don’t have to go down the path of troubleshooting the issue.
Thanks,
Aresh Sarkari
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