My Documents Freezes Explorer.exe
My Documents is a folder that contains all the DOC, RTF, TXT, PDF and other document files created on or saved to your computer, although other files can be stored in this folder as well. Microsoft Windows uses Windows Explorer, or explorer.exe, the operating system's graphical user interface and file system, to view the contents of My Documents. Problematic files or system settings can cause Explorer to freeze when you try to view My Documents.
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Corrupted File
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Corrupted or infected files can interfere with the operation of Windows Explorer. If the file contains harmful data due to a virus infection, explorer.exe might come to a stop when a user attempts to open, rename or delete the file. In some cases just viewing the file in Windows Explorer can cause My Documents to crash. Run an antivirus program from within Safe Mode—which you can turn on via the Advanced Boot Options screen at startup—to check for, remove and clean infected files. To enter the Advanced Boot Options screen, first remove all disks such as CDs and DVDs from your computer, and then restart. Press and hold the "F8" key before the Windows logo appears.
Context Menu Handler
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Explorer.exe is called a shell, a piece of software responsible for providing the interface upon which all applications operate. Context menu handlers are shell extensions that insert additional commands into the context menu. Open With, Delete, Rename and Properties are examples of commands that appear when you open a context menu. If a context menu for a certain file type contains faulty code, Windows Explorer will freeze or crash whenever a context menu loads the defective command. ShellExView is an application that manages context menu handlers; you can disable each handler one by one to find out which command is causing the problem.
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Corrupted Hard Drive
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If the hard drive is old or damaged, it can develop bad sectors, which are blocks of corrupted data. A couple of bad sectors are not enough to affect hard drive performance, but several bad sectors can ruin the integrity of a hard drive. If My Documents contains files that are written to bad sectors on the drive, explorer.exe will have trouble reading the data from the drive; the program might freeze when attempting to access the corrupted data. Running the command "chkdsk c:/ r" (without quotes) from the Command Prompt allows the computer to mark off bad sectors, but if many blocks are corrupted the drive might not be salvageable.
Event Viewer
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Event Viewer provides logs detailing application, security and system events occurring in Windows. If Windows Explorer freezes after you open My Documents, but troubleshooting fails to fix the problem, check recent Event Viewer logs to see if the application created a recent entry describing the cause of the error. From the Control Panel, select Performance and Maintenance, then Administrative Tools to access the Event Viewer.
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