Start a file explorer from the folder icon on task bar - window comes up, spinny wheel for 2-3 seconds, entire desktop crashes and comes back up. Event viewer cites the application error mentioned in the title.

A Dell precision 5520 laptop, good specs, fresh-ish install of 10, rockwell software and other stuff. Had been working normally.

User says he installed a prompted Dell update last night, which could be legit.

SFC scannow - found and repaired corrupted files. Did not fix the problem.

Did the power shell windows image repair-online thing. Did not fix problem

Windows defender scan - found nothing

Put on a windows update, updates are current, did not fix problem.

Uninstalled the latest VCruntime packages, reinstalled, did not fix problem

Safe mode - problem does not arise, thought maybe I could REPLACE the ucrtbase.dll, but alas it appears to be quite difficult to do. The DLL is dated 2022 which may or may not mean anything. That may indicate it isn’t the real issue.

So, HERE is the interesting thing-

Right click on desktop, create “New Folder”.

Open “New Folder” and a file explorer window comes up, and does NOT crash. Works fine.

Unpin folder icon from task bar, drag new folder icon to task bar, pin. Launch file explorer window from the task bar, crashes explorer.exe as before.

Go back to “new folder” icon on desktop - works fine.

Headdesk.

Any idea why this would happen? Any way to fix?