Explorer.exe launching without tabs or buttons + Empty context menu? (VMware)

[ZorkLVM]

Anyone else ever see this?

About every 5th launch of explorer.exe results in this. This is on Win11 23H2-JAN2025 and 24H2-DEC2024 never passed through NTLite.

If you haven't seen this, please let me know.
View attachment 13675

I'm wondering if this might be a VMware virtual machine issue.

 

[nuhi]

For any VMWare video-glitches, for me it was the Nvidia frame limiting.
So if you have Nvidia GPU, make sure to disable:
“Max Frame Rate” and “Background Max Frame Rate”
for process C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation\x64\vmware-vmx.exe

 

[ZorkLVM]

I have both of those disabled by default (Off). This simply has to be a virtual machine problem. Going to see if it happens in VirtualBox. I wish I had metal hardware to test on right now.

Edit: Yeah, it's definitely a VMware issue. Hyper-V has no problems, but I can't live without tabbed VMs. Waaaaah!

 

[nuhi]

Try also updating Nvidia driver to the latest, with power saving mode set to High Performance - forgot to mention that one.

Check the online reports of this, plenty to go over, I was going nuts until found out that it was Nvidia driver, thought it's some removal.
Now with the new Nvidia app (replaced Nvidia Geforce Experience), I get an Nvidia overlay popup when starting VMs, then it started clicking it could be it.

As the last resort, turn off 3D Acceleration in the VMWare VM settings.