Hello all.
I believe I have found the real fix for this issue. I was battling with the same problem with KB4579311 as all of you.
The solution for me turned out to be uninstalling all the Xbox Game Pass games downloaded from Microsoft Store.
My Xbox Game Pass subscription had ended, but I still had some games installed. After uninstalling all of them my PC starts up without any problems now.
I believe the problem is related to Microsoft Store trying to update games after your Xbox Game Pass subscription has ended.
(This is why disabling Storage Service also fixes the issue)
Microsoft Store didn't show the games I had installed anymore, so I had to scroll through my Start Menu and uninstall them from there.
Hope this helps!
- Jimmy
Oh wow, this makes a lot of sense!
Thank you so much.
I am still beyond confused on why this would affect explorer as badly as it did, this is not by any means an edge case, you would expect microsoft's first party software and services to work well alongside windows.