Microsoft Engineer Reveals Real Cause of Earlier File Explorer Crashes

Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen recently shared a debugging story that explains a wave of mysterious File Explorer crashes, and it turns out Windows wasn’t to blame.

The issue first appeared as a sudden spike in crashes, leading engineers to suspect a flaw inside the operating system. However, deeper analysis of crash dumps revealed something unusual: the failures came from the 32-bit version of File Explorer running on 64-bit Windows systems.

Legacy component exposed the real problem

Windows still includes a 32-bit version of File Explorer for compatibility with older apps. Under normal conditions, modern systems rarely use it.

In this case, a third-party uninstaller forced the system into that legacy path. That’s where things started to break.

Faulty code caused memory corruption

The root issue came down to how the uninstaller interacted with system APIs. It used the wrong function calling convention and mishandled stack parameters.

Each failed operation removed stack data incorrectly. Because the process repeated in a loop, memory corruption built up over time. Eventually, the stack pointer drifted into active code, triggering a crash in File Explorer.

Why the issue looked like a Windows bug

From the outside, the behavior mimicked a typical OS failure. File Explorer crashed repeatedly, giving the impression of system instability.

In reality, the operating system only surfaced the consequences of faulty third-party code. The bug originated outside Windows, but the symptoms appeared inside a core component.

Broader lesson for Windows users

Chen highlighted a key reality of the Windows ecosystem: with billions of devices and countless applications, not every crash points to Microsoft.

Third-party software can destabilize even core system processes if it misuses system-level APIs. Proper debugging requires analyzing root causes, not relying on assumptions.

Related issues still affect Windows users

While this case clears Windows itself, other problems remain. The recent update KB5083769 introduced Remote Desktop UI issues on multi-monitor setups with mismatched scaling.

Microsoft is also addressing separate Windows Server crashes through an emergency update.

A crashing Windows component doesn’t automatically mean a Windows bug. As this case shows, external software can quietly trigger deep system instability, and only careful debugging reveals the truth.

Via Neowin