Back in 2015, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows. But the tech giant took everyone by surprise when they released Windows 11 in October last year.

While the latest version of Windows brings in significant changes in terms of UI, the performance of the OS is similar to that of Windows 10.

Windows-11-inline
Source

Having said that, like all other iterations of Microsoft’s operating system, Windows 11 has had its fair share of bugs and glitches such as volume icon in taskbar corner appearing muted and snipping tool unable to take screenshots.

And now, Windows 11 users are reporting that explorer.exe is crashing whenever they adjust the brightness or volume using the keyboard. Users said that the issue surfaced after updating to Windows 11 Build 22533.

However, explorer.exe behaves normally if you change the volume or brightness normally by using the taskbar switch. This is really frustrating since many use their keyboards to adjust these parameters.

It looks like restarting Windows does not help fix the explorer.exe crashes and rebooting to safe mode doesn’t work either.

Microsoft-Windows-11-Explorer.exe-crashing
Source

Windows 11 Build 22533 volume slider bug
Hi, Just did the update to the 22533.1001 build, and it seems the volume slider just disappeared. If I try to change the volume, the explorer program just restarts (closes every explorer windows, get a dark gray reset desktop, the task bar just appears empty for a second and then everything is back as if I just logged in) Any idea why ? Thanks, Arthur
(Source)

It was the same for me. I was so anxious for having that Windows update because it has been 10 years with the same volume, brightness, etc. indicators and it’s time for a design change. But now, it doesn’t show any new slider and makes the Windows file explorer restart and all the taskbar and everything turns white for some seconds and it’s really bad. I don’t even know the reason why of them launching and update like that that has a very simple and visible bug. They only had to edit the same code of all life with the new design and that’s it.
(Source)

Thankfully, Microsoft has acknowledged the Windows 11 explorer.exe crashing issue and said that it is currently under investigation.

Microsoft-Windows-11-Explorer.exe-crashing-acknowledgement
Click/tap to enlarge image (Source)

If you are facing the same issue, a user has suggested a workaround that might help fix the issue. They say that explorer crashes because of a Language experience pack.

1. Open Powershell as Administrator
2. Paste the following command into the terminal then restart your PC after it finished.
Get-AppxPackage *LanguageExperiencePack* | Remove-AppxPackage
(Source)

We hope Microsoft fixes the bug as soon as possible since it is causing inconvenience to many. When they do, we will let you know so stay tuned.

Also, do let us know if the aforementioned workaround fixed thee issue for you in the comment section down below.

Note: We have more such stories in our dedicated Windows Section so be sure to follow them as well.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.

Anurag Chawake
1373 Posts

My fascination with technology and computers goes back to the days of Windows XP. Since then, I have been tinkering with OS, mobile phones, and other things. When I am not working on anything, you will find me enjoying video games on some Discord server.

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