File Explorer freezes, toolbar buttons unclickable

The May update shipped with fancy new AI features for File Explorer. It also shipped with a File Explorer that freezes solid — toolbar buttons become completely unclickable, mouse and keyboard inputs randomly stop working, and the whole thing locks up tighter than a Windows license agreement. For those lucky enough to avoid the freeze, the update simply refused to install, offering a smorgasbord of error codes: 0x800f0991, 0x80070002, 0x800f081f, and more. Microsoft’s official support was, as Neowin put it, “useless.” At least the AI search works great in the File Explorer you can’t interact with.