Urgh...Windows Explorer crashing on me!

I had problems with my File Explorer application on my desktop yesterday. For no known reason, that is, no reason known to me, every time that I opened up File Explorer, it would crash on me. It reached a stage where I thought that I would need to re-instal Windows 10 on my personal computer as a last resort. But first, I understood that some investigation could be needed. Was this a problem that other people were also experiencing?

Apparently, yes. There were many other instances of File Explorer crashing on users in the last few days and of course, people asking for help and assistance, like me. It was time consuming to read through many of the forums, blogs and websites before I finally had a vague idea of what to do.

Firstly, from this webpage, I learnt that the the Event Viewer application would help to identify the cause of the crashes. To start up Event Viewer, do a right click on the START button and choose the Event Viewer function on the menu. When Event Viewer opens, go to the Windows Log and choose the Application tag. You will find lots of error logs reported. Check the latest error that coincided with the time that File Explorer crashed. Below the window, you can see the details related to that particular error. In the case of my desktop, I saw:

Faulting application name: explorer.exe, version: 10.0.14393.953, time stamp: 0x58ba5aa4
Faulting module name: CompPkgSup.DLL, version: 10.0.14393.953, time stamp: 0x58ba5c12
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000000349d
Faulting process id: 0x760
Faulting application start time: 0x01d2aed8b47aea57
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\CompPkgSup.DLL
Report Id: 7ea04522-fc33-4619-b3eb-e413c990ef51
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

All this actually made no sense to me but I could put two-and-two together to guess that the CompPkgSup.dll was the culprit. Somewhere along the way it had gotten corrupted and now, it was affecting my system. So what is this CompPkgSup.dll? More googling turned up that in March 2017, Microsoft issued a Windows 10 update known as KB4013429 which included a new version of CompPkgSup.dll. Some tech fellas suggested that affected users could uninstal this March update of Windows 10 and everything would be fine again.

Easier said than done. How to uninstal this update? After some more groping around the Internet for answers, this I learnt: in order to proceed, click on the START button and choose Settings from the menu. Then select the Update & Security option, go to Update History and then choose Uninstall Updates. You'll see a long list of updates for your computer. Scroll down until you see Security Update for Microsoft Windows (KB4013429). To uninstal this update, click on it and then on the Uninstall an Update link at the top of this window.

You will have to be patient while the computer goes through a long process of reverting to the previous version of Windows 10 during which time the computer may reboot once or twice or maybe more times. Anyway, be patient. At the end of the long process when Windows 10 finally boots up, test your File Explorer again. It worked for me and I hope it works for you too. But please don't blame me if it doesn't work, okay? Do it at your own risk!