Windows 11 Refused to Open Any Apps on Startup. Here's How I Fixed It
What I thought was a hardware failure turned out to be more Microsoft bullshit
A few days ago, I reinstalled Windows on my gaming desktop. Why? The drive stopped working for the 3rd time. I’m never again buying any Kingston disks, but that’s another discussion.
I replaced the Kingston drive with a Samsung Pro SSD. They’re known for their reliability, and I just wanted to play games in the evenings, instead of doing endless Windows recoveries due to the drive failing.
Unfortunately, I still had many days of frustration ahead of me.
The Backstory: An exercise in patience and frustration
For some unknown reason, when I set the system up, everything worked perfectly. It kept working perfectly even after the 3rd, 4th, sometimes even the 5th reboot.
But then, disaster struck.
All of a sudden, I wouldn’t be able to open any apps. The system would boot, explorer.exe would start up, but that was it. I couldn’t open any apps, couldn’t launch anything from even the desktop, and what’s worse, I couldn’t even shut the system down, because the shutoff button didn’t do anything. When I plugged in a USB drive, Explorer would show up, but it would just freeze.
I stared to think it was another hardware failure. But with a Samsung SSD? And the system worked before it rebooted? Hardware failure was unlikely. It had to have been a software issue.
Diagnosing the Problem
From my limited experience with Windows, I knew that if explorer.exe shits the bed, the entire system collapses. So I thought that was the problem.
I booted into Safe Mode, and everything worked. Confirmed, it’s not a hardware issue.
Then I started thinking: what’s a component of explorer.exe, that, in my case, could break everything?
It’s nothing to do with system IO, because the system could still boot, and if I was fast enough, I could even open files.
Then it hit me: OneDrive. Microsoft has been shoving it down out throats because nobody wanted to use that shit, and they wanted the recurring revenue, alá Apple.
My OneDrive is completely full. I don’t pay for it. I don’t need it. And Microsoft’s programming is shitty enough that I could believe that if OneDrive was full, it would break the entire system (trust me, I worked for Microsoft).
It turned out that OneDrive was indeed the problem! After I completely disabled it through the Group Policy Editor, the system sprang back to life, and has been working perfectly ever since.
The Solution
If you ran into a similar problem (e.g. your system boots perfectly fine, but you can’t do anything once it does), here’s what you should do:
Obtain Windows Pro edition. Forget morals, microsoft doesn’t give a shit about you, and neither should you give a shit about Microsoft.
Boot into Safe Mode so you can do anything at all
Open the Group Policy Editor using
Windows + R
and launchinggpedit.msc
. It has to include the.msc
extension, using justgpedit
doesn’t workOnce it opens, go here: Computer Configuration → Administrative Templates → Windows Components → OneDrive
Disable everything there by:
Double-clicking on a row, which will open a sub-window you can use to edit the policy
In the sub-window that opens, forbidding the option
Closing the sub-window
Once you’ve disable all OneDrive-related policies, reboot. It should work now!
As a bonus, I’d recommend that you convert your account to a Local Account to stay safe from whatever shit Microsoft will pull next
Now, you can check out Cork on your Mac :P