Are there any alternatives to explorer.exe for Windows, not just for the file manager but for the desktop too? My school laptop has admin rights but runs really poorly. Explorer.exe often causes freezes, especially when I press the Windows key or use the taskbar. Killing explorer.exe makes things a bit better, but it’s not practical. I’m looking for something that replaces explorer.exe but is more stable and performs better.
You can speed up Windows by tweaking a few things. Is this Windows 10 or 11? You can try disabling visual effects, turning off indexing, stopping startup apps, setting the power mode to performance, and turning off tips and notifications, among other things.
Check out “LiteStep” or “Emerge Desktop” for lightweight alternatives that give the Windows shell a revamp without the lag.
A good file manager like Directory opus or XYplorer there replaces explorer completely
It happens here sometimes too, and it’s kind of weird, but it usually fixes itself after a couple of days.
Try XnView…it’s an image viewer, but it works with any files and has its own thumbnail database. The thumbnails in Explorer might be causing those issues.
Reinstall Windows. Explorer.exe is a core part of the OS, so even if you replace its UI, it’ll still be running and can slow things down if there’s an issue.
If explorer.exe is running slowly, something else is wrong with Windows or some installed software. Explorer.exe itself isn’t inherently slow or unstable—it’s responsible for many tasks other programs request. Problems often come from misconfigurations or leftover junk from other software. If you can’t figure out the issue, you’ll need to reinstall or reset your OS to find out what’s causing the problem, because it’s not explorer.exe itself.
That’s unfortunate… Since it’s on my school laptop, I can’t just reinstall Windows, and I doubt it would help anyway. The laptop has really low-end specs and is already on a fresh install since it’s new. I’ve used the same model at other schools and had the same lousy performance.
I’m just wondering if there’s another option. Otherwise, I’m thinking about getting an external SSD, installing a Linux distro on it, and booting from that instead.