Bug: Files not opening for me

[onlytanmoy]

Description

Hi, I am unable to launch Files either from Start or via my Win + E shortcut. I tried repair option from app settings, no luck. Please let me know how I can manually update me registry for Win + E combination to launch my default windows explorer.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Go to Windows Start, Files - Open
2. or press Win + E shortcut

Files Version

3.7.11.0

Windows Version

cannot access as Files not opening

User ID

cannot access as Files not opening

Log File

cannot access as Files not opening

[Josh65-2201]

Thanks for the report, can you type Event Viewer into the Windows start menu search > Click Windows logs > Click Application > Screenshot any errors that have Files.exe shown on the first line

You can revert by open this https://raw.githubusercontent.com/files-community/Files/main/src/Files.App/Assets/FilesOpenDialog/UnsetFilesAsDefault.reg > Right click anywhere > Save as > Set "Save as type" (Around the bottom) to all files > Remove .txt from the end of file name > Run the file

[onlytanmoy]

Thank you for sharing the .reg file.

I am not able to spot any such error in Event viewer, however I am able to get hold of debug.log file from below location C:\Users\alpha\AppData\Local\Packages\49306atecsolution.FilesUWP_et10x9a9vyk8t\LocalState Will that help?

[Josh65-2201]

It probably won't have the error for this type of crash, but please uploaded it anyway.

[onlytanmoy]

please find the log debug.log

One more thing from the log file: the excel file in below location 'Books.xlsx' has gone missing, I can't find it in recycle bin even, looks like Files app has deleted it, any way to recover it?

An error occurred trying to start process 'C:\Users\alpha\OneDrive_Troy\OneDrive\Personal\Books.xlsx' with working directory 'C:\WINDOWS\System32'. The system cannot find the file specified.

[Josh65-2201]

Has it actually been deleted? If it's on OneDrive then you can check its recycle bin.

[onlytanmoy]

Yeah unfortunately, I don't keep my OneDrive running in the background, I just sync it once a quarter, so all recent changes made to the spreadsheet was saved locally on my laptop. I found the same file in the recycle bin of OneDrive but that was from the month of September so obviously missing any updates I made to the file after that month 😞

[onlytanmoy]

can you type Event Viewer into the Windows start menu search > Click Windows logs > Click Application > Screenshot any errors that have Files.exe shown on the first line

I tried this again today morning, before opening Event Viewer I tried launching Files which didn't open, in Event Viewer under today's date, I could only see Level type Information and no Error, still I manually scrolled through all Information line items but couldn't find anything related to Files, strange no?

Forgot to mention one thing yesterday, only the Books.xlsx file went missing from C:\Users\alpha\OneDrive_Troy\OneDrive\Personal Other excel, word, text files were still present. In fact I tried opening Excel app to check if I can recover Books.xlsx from recent files but got message saying Excel.exe program couldn't be find when I clicked Excel under Windows Start menu apps, I had to then reinstall Excel again (Word, PowerPoint were fine), weird!