explorer.exe not in task manager and i think its causing a few other issues too
a few days ago my print screen key wasnt working so i looked it up and one of the solutions said to restart explorer.exe in task manager. when i searched for it 3 different instances of task manager showed up so i restarted all of them. another issue started around this time where anytime i click to open a photo it says it cant find anything in the specified path but i was able to open those exact same files by just opening the photos app and navigating manually to where they were saved, and also something else at the same time is that some games will crash on starting up with a "this program is not responding" (idk if this matters but it started at the same time).
this morning when i woke up i ran into the same issue so i go to check my task manager and search for explorer there is no instance of it at all. all the other processes also have had their icons removed and replaced with a grey box. a lot of solutions ive looked up just say to resart exlporer or run it as a new task in the manager but i cant restart what isnt there and when i open the file explorer it still doesnt show up in task manager. i can still open the actual file explorer and my taskbar is fine.
ive tried a full restart with holding shift as i restart with no success, ive run sfc /scannow and DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth in an admin cmd, im currently looking at reinstalling windows to just get a clean start over unless anyone has any suggestions before i do that
specs are
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i5 12600
Alder Lake 10nm Technology
RAM
32.0GB Dual-Channel DDR4 @ 1330MHz (19-19-19-43)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. B660M AORUS PRO AX DDR4 (U3E1)
Graphics
27B2 (1920x1080@60Hz)
KG272 M3 (1920x1080@180Hz)
Intel UHD Graphics 770 (Gigabyte)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (Gigabyte)
SLI Disabled
Storage
931GB Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB (SATA (SSD))
1863GB TOSHIBA EXTERNAL\_USB USB Device (USB (SATA) )