Dont know what you people did in the new verson but you F***ed up something hard. Explorer keeps crashing on repeat.

I am sorry you are experiencing a problem.  This is not normal for Start11 1.2.

Firstly don't worry you don't lose a license by not deactivating before uninstalling.  It is possible to even deactivate a dead machine from the website.

Are you able to access the Windows event log and see what the error was for explorer crashing?

Some further information on your setup would be most helpful too.

How many monitors, do you use displayfusion or similar tools, if more than one monitor do you have explorer set to display the taskbar only on the main one?

I am guessing you also said yes to enabling the taskbar enhancement options on first run?

And finally what antivirus package do you use?

Sorry Got a little mad there.

I've been swapping out defective motherboards and every time I do a motherboard swap, I notice Start 11 breaks. With this new update my usual method of reinstalling start11 to fix explorer crashing every time I open the Start menu no longer works. The Mine craft launcher is a big issue for Start 11 if it's pinned to the start menu explorer will crash every time, I open it (this was with large thumbnails mode but now it just crashes every 2 seconds on cycle forever no matter the thumbnail size). Had to go to safe mode to remove Start 11 and I barely made it there. 

I use 2 1440P monitors, no other monitor software, taskbar is on both screens, Yea I did the taskbar enhancement on first run, I only use Windows defender nothing special.

I need guidance on what Info in event viewer to give to you as I am not familiar with it.

-Chief      

Thats quite understandable, we all get frustrated when things suddenly stop working.

If you swap a motherboard then Start11 might require reactivating as the machine will appear to have changed.

Interestingly enough we are looking at a problem with minecraft launcher as we had another customer hit a problem with this.  It causes what seems to be a most unusual error reading in the tile image for it.

To open eventviewer you press winkey + R and type eventvwr in the box and press enter.

This should open the eventviewer window.  Then on the left side click on Windows logs and then application.  This should update with a huge number of events on the list most of which will be "information"  you are looking for one with a red exclamation mark and Error.  Source should be Application Error.  By default it sorts by date / time so what you want should be the first one you come across when says Faulting application name "Explorer.Exe" in the general tab below when clicked on.  If you know the approximate time it happened you can use the date and time to help you find it.

Once you find it, if you can post the information here (you can select and use ctrl+C or alternatively take a screenshot) it would be most helpful.

Also which version of Minecraft launcher do you have installed?

I think but I can't be sure when Start11 acted up the first time I tried to see if there was an available update that might have been able to save me but there wasn't. Start11 still said it was activated and no "this software is not activated start 30-day trial" prompts came up this I'm sure of.

Yea all my issues are related to the Minecraft launcher in some way. When I first installed Start11 I was able to add Minecraft to the menu without issue but after every motherboard swap it would bug out (Minecraft launcher thumbnail would be blank then a second latter explorer would crash). I discovered large thumbnails and Minecraft launcher combined were causing crashing. If I was able to remove the Minecraft launcher from the start menu it would work again but now it doesn't. Also installing the new version, I had nothing pinned to start like I did when I first installed start 11 nothing carried over and I had to unpin and re pin. Start 11 doesn't like large thumbnail of the Minecraft launcher. Latest all in one Minecraft launcher (I don't think there's a way to play Minecraft standalone anymore anyways): Windows 10.0 2.2.12146. 

There's quite a few error reports hear are several of them:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows cannot access the file for one of the following reasons: there is a problem with the network connection, the disk that the file is stored on, or the storage drivers installed on this computer; or the disk is missing. Windows closed the program Windows Explorer because of this error.

Program: Windows Explorer

File: 

The error value is listed in the Additional Data section.

User Action

1. Open the file again. This situation might be a temporary problem that corrects itself when the program runs again.

2. If the file still cannot be accessed and

- It is on the network, your network administrator should verify that there is not a problem with the network and that the server can be contacted.

- It is on a removable disk, for example, a floppy disk or CD-ROM, verify that the disk is fully inserted into the computer.

3. Check and repair the file system by running CHKDSK. To run CHKDSK, click Start, click Run, type CMD, and then click OK. At the command prompt, type CHKDSK /F, and then press ENTER.

4. If the problem persists, restore the file from a backup copy.

5. Determine whether other files on the same disk can be opened. If not, the disk might be damaged. If it is a hard disk, contact your administrator or computer hardware vendor for further assistance.

Additional Data

Error value: C0000290

Disk type: 0

-----------------------------------------------------------AND-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Faulting application name: explorer.exe, version: 10.0.22000.593, time stamp: 0x59a4b94a

Faulting module name: gdi32full.dll, version: 10.0.22000.527, time stamp: 0xb6e82eaa

Exception code: 0xc0000006

Fault offset: 0x0000000000027084

Faulting process id: 0x2d7c

Faulting application start time: 0x01d84a4f087bb7fa

Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe

Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\gdi32full.dll

Report Id: 39b620e2-6610-4508-983b-c8463471be54

Faulting package full name: 

Faulting package-relative application ID: 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Error comes in pairs with both these messages right after another. Theirs 40+ paired entries like these, all look exactly like the 2 errors posted above.   

Hope this helps

-Chief

Yes that looks like minecraft has a broken image.  We have added some exception handling around it, but from the other users report it looks like the files are totally corrupt.  If the icon requested is small enough you would be ok, but go larger and it tried to load up the bigger images.  I think the earlier versions of Start11 didn't use the bigger ones thus avoiding the issue.  We may force detect that and make it go smaller icons only.  A fuzzy icon trumps a crash

If you uninstall Minecraft launcher and then reinstall it does the problem go away?

As in? The crashing loop stops? Or can I use the menu as normal once Minecraft is removed? I think its only Minecraft causing issues so if its not on the menu their shouldn't be an issue. I have removed start11 as of now and I don't really want to get back into a crash loop to test this. This test seems pointless to me unless I'm missing something? 

-Chief 

Edit: ahh to test a broken icon right? ill try and let you know.

EDIT 2: Well, I went on a rampage and manually deleted things that I no longer use (Including Stardock folder) from program files and app data etc. mainly to clean up after an Asus Armory crate bloatware thing I wanted removed and when I reinstalled this time my pinned start items were their. I guess I cleared something out. The thing is there were multiple Stardock folders I deleted which one is the cache for start 11?  

Also Since I'm talking to a dev I think or someone high up can you change the search filters behavior to also check library locations? As someone who stores their music on my backup drive in a library and not in the default music folder the search filters are worthless to me because they only search that one default location. It would be great if Start11 would either filter everything based on filters or indexed locations or libraries.

Thanks!

-Chief

The test was to see if bad files were not replaced in a Minecraft update but would be for a new install of Minecraft in which case the crash would stop.

That said we found a machine this reproduced on and a test update seems to have avoided the crash so hopefully there will be an update next week.

From my last post that I was editing while you wrote this lol

Edit: ahh to test a broken icon right? ill try and let you know.

EDIT 2: Well, I went on a rampage and manually deleted things that I no longer use (Including Stardock folder) from program files and app data etc. mainly to clean up after an Asus Armory crate bloatware thing I wanted removed and when I reinstalled this time my pinned start items were their. I guess I cleared something out. The thing is there were multiple Stardock folders I deleted which one is the cache for start 11?  

Also Since I'm talking to a dev I think or someone high up can you change the search filters behavior to also check library locations? As someone who stores their music on my backup drive in a library and not in the default music folder the search filters are worthless to me because they only search that one default location. It would be great if Start11 would either filter everything based on filters or indexed locations or libraries.

Thanks!

-Chief

EDIT: Also, I notice that the second block of 9 tiles are all small thumbnails even when use large thumbnails is on.

EDIT 2: andddd it fixed itself. Side note gears of war 4 uses the same icon as gears of war 1 when using large thumbnails. Is it possible to set large or small thumbnails per pinned item? That would fix like everything.