Windows Explorer is no longer responding

Question

I help take care many computers (200+) at my place of work. We have a guy that makes our Clones that we install on to the computers for us. Every so often, we get people that have issues with Window Explorer not responding. One fix that was found to
help with this was to take a copy of explorer.exe file from the windows folder to the system32 folder and send a copy of that to the desktop. From there we open it and repin it to the task bar after the old one has been unpinned. From time to time we get some
people that this will not work for and we have just gone and recloned the computer. We install all the basic hardware drivers and run windows update. Yes we do use policies on all users and computers. We have had a few computers that start doing this right
after all of the updates are done and we went ahead and started over. Then everything seems to be fine. Lately, there has been a few computers that we have done this to fix the issue have started doing it again. With reading may different things online on
possible ways to fix this, it has only worked on a couple. Still having some that these fixes are not working. List of what we have tried goes like this:
Disable the Preview Pane in Windows Explorer and see if it helps. To disable the Preview Pane, click Organize > Layout > Preview Pane.
Disable Thumbnails and see if this stops the problem. To do so, open Folder Options > View tab > Check Always show Icons, never thumbnail. Also remove
the check for the option to Display file icon on thumbnails. Click Apply/OK
Updated Outdated or corrupt video drivers can cause Windows Explorer to stop working. Update your drivers and see if it helps.
Recloned Computer and only have Drivers and updates installed.
Few things we can’t really do is the;
Check Disk (seems this is even happening on brand new computers).
Installed Add-ons.
Check if you have installed any helpers or add-ons to your explorer. Uninstall or disable them. Often, even 3rd-party shell extensions can cause Explorer to crash on particular actions. Several programs add items to the right-click context menu. (users can
not install anything without admin rights and we do not use addons in windows explorer).
System Restore – This is disabled.
Disable DEP or NoExecute Protection (this for many reasons)
Run sfc /scannow and at the end reboot if the system file checker asks for it. The System File Checker will on reboot, replace corrupt system files, if any are found. (We don’t use a DVD for the installs or to build the clones)
Wercon – Not available on our systems.
Start up programs – With policies in place, and what little is installed on the computers, there is nothing else starting up with the system other then Virus Scanner. And this problems can and has started before we can even get the virus scanner installed
onto the computer.
Run the Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool to check for possible memory problems, including testing of 
the Random Access Memory (RAM) on your computer (this happens even on new computers till I reclone the computer and its fine)
These fixes I am talking about are found http://www.thewindowsclub.com/windows-explorer-crashes-freezes
This has started to get more and more in the last month with some of the Window updates that have been coming out. We are lost on what else to do to these computers. We are running Windows 7 Pro with SP1 and any and all updates possible with our policies.
Running Internet Explorer 9 (this is our standard for not all websites that are used are not supporting any newer versions). 4GB+ on memory. HP Compaq 8000 CMT or newer computers (most computers we have are the HP 8300 CMT). These computers are on contract
to us with HP.
We have no idea what else to do to fix these issues. Not all of the people that this happens to wants to have the computer recloned when it may or may not fix the problem and it takes them so long to just setup the computer to their liking. That also means
the profiles are not all roaming. 90% of the users have a local profile. Please help with this issue. Any suggestions will be tested to see if they work. Thank you ahead of time for your help and time.

Answer 1

After over 2 months dealing with this issue, I have now found a fix that seems to be working for now. I have done it on a few computers and seem to working just fine. We had a way here that we used to fix this. It was to take the Explorer.exe file from the
windows folder and add it to the system32 folder (copy and paste it). Then right click on that file in the system32 folder and send to desktop (or you can just send a shortcut to the desktop right from the windows folder also works). Unpin the current one
from the taskbar. Open the new shortcut on the desktop and pin it back to your taskbar. This seems to work on some computers. Not all of them. For the next step, you do need to have this done though. Go to your control panel - Administrator tools - scroll
all the way down to Services (you will need admin rights to do this) and run the program. Scroll down to Windows Search and double click it. You will want to stop the service and change the startup type to Disabled. This seems to work without restarting the
computer but it is a good idea to do this anyway.  There seems to be an issue on some computers with the indexing causing it to not respond. I’m not saying this is the problem with all of them. If you read the other post, you can see there
are other options to try also. Some issues are also .dll files. In this area here are almost all of the possible fixes to this issue. Hope it will help others out. Good luck
PS. Sure hope Microsoft will fix this issue for good some day. But I dont think that will happen.
Mark Dewey