Windows 10 20H2 File Explorer intermittently flashes and hiccups whole laptop

Hi! My name is Anderson Souza. I'm an Independent Advisor and a Microsoft user like you, I'll be glad to help you today.

"That visual clue seems to suggest that File Explorer is doing some sort of multiple blanket refresh on all the filesystem nodes and perhaps exacerbated by SMB connections to multiple computers in the network?"

If you disable all network interfaces and activate airplane mode, does the problem continue?

Hi! My name is Anderson Souza. I'm an Independent Advisor and a Microsoft user like you, I'll be glad to help you today.

"That visual clue seems to suggest that File Explorer is doing some sort of multiple blanket refresh on all the filesystem nodes and perhaps exacerbated by SMB connections to multiple computers in the network?"

If you disable all network interfaces and activate airplane mode, does the problem continue?

Yes File Explorer still goes through those spasms even when there's no usable network interface.

Thanks for the feedback. Would you know if you already have the latest video driver?

But there are two tools that you can try at first, they are "sfc" and "dism". In the following link, you will see how to use them. This is from the official Microsoft Support page:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/402652...

The System File Checker (SFC) tool built into Windows will scan your Windows system files for corruption or any other changes. If a file has been modified, it will automatically replace that file with the correct version. If the SFC command doesn’t work, you can also try the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) command to repair the underlying Windows system image.

[ Using System File Checker in Windows 10 ]

System File Checker is a utility in Windows 10 that checks for problems with files on your computer. To run it, follow these steps:

Make sure you've installed the latest updates for Windows 10, and then restart your machine. To find out more, read Update Windows 10.

In the search box on the taskbar, type Command Prompt, and right-click or press and hold Command Prompt (Desktop app) from the list of results. Select Run as administrator, and then select Yes.

Type DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth (note the space before each "/"), and then press Enter. (Note: This step may take a few minutes to start and up to 30 minutes to complete.)

After you see a message that says "The operation completed successfully," type sfc/scannow (note the space between "sfc" and "/") and press Enter.

After you see a message that says, "Verification 100% complete," type exit.

Recently updated my computers - custom desktop, Microsoft Surface Pro 4, and Lenovo ThinkPad T480 - from Windows 10 1909/2004 to 20H2.

The ThinkPad laptop now gets intermittent but frequent seizures to various system aspects; the whole desktop GUI may freeze, some unknown windows (menu bar) flash into ephemeral existence, some windows (browser or video player) become unresponsive, mouse cursor goes missing, and from my observations, it seems to be related to Windows/File Explorer because its folder pane scroll bar always flashes when it happens. Once the flashing stops, the system resumes regular pace.

That visual clue seems to suggest that File Explorer is doing some sort of multiple blanket refresh on all the filesystem nodes and perhaps exacerbated by SMB connections to multiple computers in the network?

Anybody else experiencing such hiccups?

My custom desktop and a decent laptop are both experiencing lag from the same scenario. My desktop is an 8-core 4.0 GHz with a nvme M.2 drive and 16 GB of RAM and File Explorer locks up when I open a zip file? The laptop was also performing perfectly well before the 20H2 update and now performs similar to one with a failing hard drive. Tbh the symptoms would make me think that was the case on both computers if I hadn't checked the performance tab and saw that the disk usage was normal.

SFC found some corrupt files, but they're not related to this problem.

2020-11-23 13:01:46, Info                  CSI    0000044e [SR] Repairing file \??\C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.3705\\mscormmc.dll from store

2020-11-23 13:01:47, Info                  CSI    0000044f [SR] Repairing file \??\C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\\OneDrive.lnk from store

DISM did not find any problems.

Thanks again for the return. If the system files seem to be intact we need to check your computer's video drivers. Check the link below to see if this is your notebook model, see if you already have the latest video drivers for your system, if not, upgrade please:

https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/products/laptops-a... 20Gr% C3% A1ficos

My system is kept up to date with drivers, firmware, BIOS by Lenovo Vantage. Although I have a separate discrete NVIDIA GPU that is updated by GeForce Experience, that does not come into play for regular desktop rendering; the integrated Intel graphics GPU deals with that.

I do not believe this to be a video driver problem unless there is some dedicated functionality a GPU provides simply for rendering scroll bars and address bars.

Also, I noticed similar rendering glitches on the Surface Pro 4, although I haven't operated it intensively enough to determine the full extent of performance hiccups on that computer.

In this case, unfortunately, I no longer know how to continue helping you. I will release your question so that another consultant can assess your problem.

Yeap, when monitoring Task Manager, every time File Explorer goes through those scroll bar and address bar spasms, explorer.exe surges in CPU usage.

There is something highly unoptimised happening with the new version of explorer.exe.