Ms Windows/File Explorer opening randomly without me pressing any key

Lessons on Life & Computers
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1

I’ve observed on Windows10 and now on Windows11 (have seen on different versions/builds of Win11) that my windows explorer is opening randomly and automatically, without the user pressing any key or even (sometimes) without moving mouse.

Mind that some other threads discuss the activation of already active Windows Explorer screen to front. But I’m not discussing that. I’m discussing the automatically opening of the MS Win Explorer repeatedly. And also that new windows open in a new Explorer window, not ‘new tabs’ in the already existing window.

After googling, I found many sites/solutions, one of them was MakeUseOf. Summary of all these suggested solutions (taken from diff sites) is given below:

Didn’t work for me

  • Turning off all ‘Auto Play’ options.
  • Restarting Windows Explorer (thru Win Task Manager), and clearing Explorer’s own history (from options) (I don’t think these’d be useful to any, at all).
  • Running System Troubleshooter, from Control Panel. (didn’t find it to be of any use)
  • Running these two commands in Windows Command window with Admin rights (which might be useful to some) also didn’t seem to be helpful to me, but still could be tried/run: First check the integrity of system file system and files by running: sfc /ScanNow (it should take around 10 minutes or so).
    And then use the DISM Tool to Diagnose Issues With Local System Images:
    DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
     This command might take double the time took by sfc command. Also in between the process, the command might show as it may have been struck/hung up. But normally it does complete.

You might also considering uninstalling/blocking some peculiar apps like Wallpaper change, MS Teams etc.

Finally, (possible) Solution for me:

  • For some time it seemed to me that ‘quitting’ “Microsoft Teams” (and wallpaper changer and some other small utilities) from windows taskbar tray (seems to) solve the problem for me. But though it seemed to have SOME effect, but still explorer opened a fresh windows, though less rarely.

  • This stack/superuser answer (mainly) asks to run these (attached herewith) batch commands
    FixWindowsExplorer-actproxy-ieproxy-for64bitonly.bat (267 Bytes)
    actProxy-ieproxy.bat (102 Bytes)
    actproxy-ieproxy-32n64.bat (271 Bytes)
    explorer.bat (267 Bytes)
    (some of these might be overlapping to others, may be repetition, and thus might not succeed). So for full details go to superuser link. Perhaps it did seem to have cured the problem (during one day testing).

#Windows-Explorer-appears-automatically
#explorer-opening-automatically-randomly
#windows11-ms-explorer

4

Even after doing the above, the problem resurfaced after a few days (I can’t say for sure if the problem had gone away in the first place).

Then this SuperUser answer solve my problem, finally and permanently.

  1. Open cmd.exe with Run as Administrator.

  2. DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /StartComponentCleanup

  3. DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /Restorehealth

  4. SFC /SCANNOW
  5. Important: Test in Safe Mode once (I think this step was imp after doing above repairs).