File Explorer Crash in Win11 23H2 Issue

Going to post my findings here, I also posted on an MS Forum where saw folks having a similar issue. The issue is tied to Avast, but not entirely the fault of Avast once I dug down and solved the issue. But Avast did play its part, so I am posting here for other Avast users to see in case this helps their issue if they have a similar scenario.

Ultimately the issue is with how Microsoft currently has the File Explorer setup to handle share drives or Mapped drives (and this may extend to other network based resources if mapped in file explorer and having issues connecting). If something that was previously mapped and working in Explorer suddenly becomes inaccessible, this causes a major seizure for file Explorer.

Read my story below I posted on the MS Forum:

So this might help you, or might not be your situation at all, but basically mine came down to main issues from how I run my computer setups personally.

I have Avast on all my computers at home, I have one main PC that acts as a home NAS (all my boxes are on Win 11 23H2 now)

I also have my shares on that NAS home server type box (which is just another Win 11 Pro desktop client) and have those drives mapped on other systems

I guess recently Avast must have updated or upgraded features again, as it was once again blocking my access to those file shares.

Last time I fixed the issue by uninstalling the Firewall component of Avast.

Suddenly today I am having the problem again. Doing some forum reading and digging, found a new settings to disable:

Settings>Protection>Remote Access Shield>Enable Samba Protection (samba is the protocol for sharing files on a windows network)

Lo and behold, the block issue on accessing my NAS shares is solved.

And oh wait, suddenly my file explorer hang issue on my 2nd computer is now solved as well! I was pulling my hair out, ran sfc, uninstalled Avast, nothing helped, my whole system would hang whenever I went to save as in an application or try to right click rename a file in explorer.

It would hang so bad that even restarting a process would not bring it back, I kept having to restart my 2nd machine to get it back.

So it seems in my case, having a mapped drive that was suddenly blocked gave File Explorer a major seizure and it just could not handle it.

I suppose I could have unmapped the drives to fix it had I known that, but Iā€™m glad I figured out the actual issue as I use those share paths often.

BUT, it just so happens Avast was a part of the cause, but the actual root cause was Mapped Network Drives in Windows file explorer in my particular case.