Windows 11 zipped folders / files immediately crashes File Explorer

Anonymous
2022-01-24T04:24:45+00:00

My Dell laptop was previously Windows 10, now 11. When I right click any zipped folder, it immediately crashes Windows Explorer, but then everything comes back. I can't unzip any zipped file at all - doesn't seem to matter what size it is.

I was trying to use the built-in unzipper utility in Windows, and when that didn't work I tried a couple 3rd party apps, including WinZip. Nothing works; they all crash, and they crash on ANY zipped file I have.

And by the way if I try to ZIP any set of files - even just 3 little word files, it does the same thing. The screen flashes, all my icons go away for a second. Then things come back, but nothing will zip or unzip.

thanks if you have any ideas!

Christine

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Performance and system failures

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-02-14T05:54:27+00:00

    hello, I've had good success flushing the dns at the command prompt. this was suggested by Manish Pandya 007

    Open your command prompt by searching cmd in the search bar of your start menu

    at the prompt type:

    ipconfig /flushdns

    hit enter

    Doing this improved performance of viewing compressed folder greatly. After window explorer only hung about 1-3 second compared to sometimes indefinitely causing it to crash.

    I noticed after a week, it started to get worse again taking longer and freezing longer.. I flushed the DNS again and it worked fine again. I have no idea why opening a compressed folder in windows explorer would have anything to do with the DNS cache.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-02-08T17:36:19+00:00

    The only way I resolved this problem was to wipe the WIn 11 installation and start again. Bit drastic, but it worked for me!

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  3. Anonymous
    2023-02-07T19:43:05+00:00

    Maybe ChatGPT will fix it!

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  4. Anonymous
    2023-02-07T19:00:20+00:00

    Same here, did you find any solution?

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  5. Anonymous
    2023-01-20T20:40:46+00:00

    I don't know how that worked but it did... how is dns related to whether you can open a compressed file in windows explorer? hope this stays resolved.. not being able to open any zip files in windows explorer has been the worst headache even and where is Microsoft on this? Ridiculous. Thanks for your post!

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