Open with -> choose an app on your PC, does not produce Explorer window

I'm working to complete the build-out of a brand new Win11 Pro 23H2 install on my Lenovo P70 laptop, having started with retail MS Win11 ISO "tweaked" by RUFUS 4.3 in order to overcome the machine hardware prerequisites for Win11. My P70 is an older 6th-generation laptop with TPM 1.2, so theoretically ineligible for Win11. The RUFUS process to create the bootable install USB from the MS ISO produces install media that will allow me to put Win11 on my P70.

To the base MS Win11 23H2 that got installed, I have then additionally applied two very well known 3rd-party "tweak" to make the Win11 user interface be more to my liking:

(a) Explorer Patcher (from GitHub), to restore the preferred Win10 taskbar, Start menu, and notification area behavior
(b) Start11v2 (from Stardock), to restore the old familiar Win7 Start menu GUI appearance and behavior as an option

I have done this very same post-install set of tweaks with Explorer Patcher and Start11 on three other machines (both store-bought HP desktops as well as built-from-scratch desktops) and everything has always been perfect. So I have 100% confidence in both of these after-market products. Never had any issues. But then I've never used the installer USB produced by RUFUS that allows me to install Win11 on a back-level machine like my P70.

So, the very specific particular problem I'm having is that the:

(a) right-click on a file in an Explorer window, to get the popup context menu
(b) choose "Open with... -> scroll to the bottom and then -> choose another app
(c) scroll to the bottom and then -> choose an app on your PC

process is then supposed to produce an Explorer window that you can then use to navigate to and select wherever this "app on your PC" might be located.

==> Well, this final click on "choose an app on your PC" does nothing!! That is the problem I'm asking for help on in this thread.

Instead of producing the Explorer window there is only a quick "flash" and then a re-paint of that existing final onscreen window with "choose an app on your PC" at the bottm. It's as if something was actually triggered but is failing or otherwise being suppressed. Whatever is going on, I am not able to actually navigate to somewhere on my PC in order to then select the program I wish to use in this one-time "open with..." situation.

I honestly have no reason to suspect either Explorer Patcher or Start11. But then I also know this is not a widespread problem, but somehow unique to my own particular brand new Win11 install situation. This is the first time I've ever used the RUFUS program to allow Win11 to be installed on an older machine, but again I really can't believe this is a problem related to RUFUS.

Any ideas what might be causing this, and/or what I can correct that would be responsible for this strange behavior? Any thoughts on a likely culprit, or some other diagnosis or troubleshooting I should do?

DSperber said:

honestly have no reason to suspect either Explorer Patcher or Start11

Click to expand...

With 11 you have to always suspect any 3rd party app that alters the GUI. It's not that difficult to uninstall them and test. They can always be reinstalled. When reinstalling I would start with Start11 first and test.

Hi, DSperber, welcome to the ElevenForums

I agree with what @glasskuter said

DSperber said:

(a) Explorer Patcher (from GitHub), to restore the preferred Win10 taskbar, Start menu, and notification area behavior
(b) Start11v2 (from Stardock), to restore the old familiar Win7 Start menu GUI appearance and behavior as an option

Click to expand...

I’m not sure how well these two would play with each other as they both assume some control of the taskbar.

Good thoughts. With Macrium Reflect available (to backup my current system in 5 minutes, and then restore it in another 5 minuts after playing around to experiment), I tried uninstalling first Start11, and then seeing if the anomaly disappeared. It did not.

I then uninstalled Explorer Patcher, to see if the anomaly disappeared. It did not.

So I still feel both of these products are not the culprit.

Given that it will only take 5 minutes to get back to where I was through a Macrium restore, I am going to "start over from scratch" to confirm that in a virgin Win11 that this works just as it should, at least "out of the box". Although I really don't have a desire to spend another 2 days manually re-installing and re-customizing all over again, I should be able to be clever about what I come forward again with to at least see if I can determine what actually happened here, and who the "culprit" really is.

But I actually do have one more major problem in my current system, in that for some reason I cannot install my antivirus program BitDefender without losing access to everything external to my PC. In other words it seems to block my network adapter, so that I cannot get to other PCs on my LAN, and cannot get to the internet. Turning off BitDefender firewall completely does not resolve the problem. This is really a major defect in my current state Win11, and a should-not-occur problem that I cannot accept. So "starting over from scratch" if that turns out to inexplicably be the solution then so be it. At the very least starting over would be a good way to isolate this Bitdefender problem as well as the "choose an app on your PC" problem.

Grrr... but I have to do it.

DSperber said:

Although I really don't have a desire to spend another 2 days manually re-installing and re-customizing all over again

Click to expand...

Consider Option Two here (Option One is only for insider versions of Windows)

Honestly, it's not like I'm 5 years into using a machine, and it might be impossible or very difficult to do a from-scratch reinstall, so that using "in-place upgrade" as a good way to restore Windows itself to "factory integrity" while retaining all data and 3rd-party products and Windows customizations. This was the start of a from-scratch new Win11 install, that I began just 3 days ago. I really would prefer just spending another 3 days redoing everything if that gets rid of my two mystery problems, to have a truly clean from-scratch new install that is 100% correct.

Anyway, I've now completed the first day of that 3-day re-do. As we all might expect, the Open with -> choose an app on your PC failure to pop up the Explorer window is now "solved'. Of course it works perfectly, as it should. I've not yet installed Start11 or Explorer Patcher, but I'm confident that will not bring back the issue. I'm certain it was something else, unknown, that caused it. I will certainly keep my eyes peeled for it to reappear as I move through the next two days. But I honestly don't expect it to reappear, as it shouldn't.

Furthermore, the fresh reinstall and start-over from scratch also has fixed my Bitdefender problem. Sure enough, as we all might expect, whatever had happened over the past 3 days which somehow caused Bitdefender to shut down access through my network adapter to my LAN and the internet, well it did not reappear so far on Day 1 of the just started reinstall project. In fact Bitdefender is now working perfectly, just as it should in this brand new reinstall. Whatever was my problem yesterday, I don't know and at this point I just don't care. It's working now, in the reinstalled system.

So at this very early stage of a new Windows install I really am just playing in the sandbox here. There's not much lost by having to scrap everything and redo everything as if it were 3 days ago, as a 100% guaranteed solution to producing a new Windows that has 100% integrity. So that's what I'm doing. Whatever had gone wrong that caused the two unrelated problems I've been fighting, I don't care.

So thank you all for your suggestions and help.