should I remove sihost.exe? it seems to crash my whole explorer (taskbar) regularly

Question

I am using windows 10; a few days ago I started noticing my whole taskbar with my desktop icons plus desktop wallpaper to disappear (everything goes black) for about 5 seconds. then everything starting up again.

i was watching at my event log and around this time I can see the application "sihost.exe" causing an error.

should I remove sihost.exe? or is there another way to fix this problem? "sihost.exe" seems to be a original windows service - so I don't know.

update: I have also noticed that the startmenu stops working after the taskbar "restarted" itself.

update 2: Just noticed that the startmenu works again when I shutdown the restarted explorer.exe and start it again "manually".

thanks for any help!

Solution

No, the SiHost.exe is an important Windows process which provides (with ShellExperienceHost.exe) the new shell (Startmenu, action center, volume changer). Deleting it would break the Windows Shell completely.

Capture a crash dump, zip and share the dmp file. I'll ask my Microsoft contacts for help.

Comments

[northkildonan]

@Ramhound yes, correct process name.

[Ramhound]

"should I remove sihost.exe?" - Its a system file.

[magicandre1981]

does version 1607 fix the issue?

[northkildonan]

thank you! as soon as i'll have the time to do it, i try to capture a crash dump. I am on a german windows 10 version if that's important. I've also noticed that the startmenu (by clicking on the windows icon) doesn't work after it all "restarted" itself.

[northkildonan]

i got a sihost.exe crah dump-zip here: filedropper.com/sihostexe8348 (~35 MB) and also a explorer.exe crash dump, explorer seems to immediately crash after sihost: filedropper.com/explorerexe1288 (~126 MB).

[magicandre1981]

ok, I go both dumps. I've asked Microsoft for help. seams to be an issue with a notification which crashes the shell.

[northkildonan]

ok, thank you! do you know which type of notification causes the problem? and will you get further information?

[magicandre1981]

no, I only see that the Windows Push Notification Core DLL (wpncore.dll) is involved in the Explorer crash

[magicandre1981]

ok, the Explorer crash happens to more users. MS currently investigates it and tries to fix it. The sihost crash is extremely rare and here MS does nothing. try a different startmenu line StartIsBack++: superuser.com/a/946675/174557

[northkildonan]

ok, thank you very much! will try another startmenu, but still hope for an windows-update that fixes this!

[George Birbilis]

btw task manager's Processes tab has an interesting feature called "Analyze wait chain" that one can use to see what something frozen is waiting upon