Explorer.exe crash loop every few seconds

July’s Patch Tuesday for Windows 11 21H2 turned explorer.exe into a perpetual crash-and-restart loop. The Windows shell would crash, the desktop and taskbar would vanish, explorer.exe would restart, and then crash again — every few seconds, indefinitely. Systems with ExplorerPatcher or StartAllBack were particularly hit. The computer remained technically “running” in the same way a car spinning its wheels in mud is technically “driving.” StartAllBack pushed a compatibility fix before Microsoft did.