Hi. I'm a long time user and lover of Start11. I've been having 2 major issues that have progressively appeared and disappeared over the past while.

Windows 23H2 22631.4169. Start 11 2.11. 

1. Start11 Search (S11Search.exe & S11Search64.exe) have very high CPU usage after a while.

While working, or even leaving my computer idle Start11 Search starts using a ton of CPU and makes a noticeable difference on games, and other workloads. I kill the process, and CPU use normalizes. The next time Start11 Search starts the CPU usage is normal. After an unknown amount of time (usually < 1hr) the CPU usage spikes to noticeable high numbers. This high CPU usage sometimes disappears on it's own, but it's very strange behaviour for the following reason:

I hate Windows' useless search, and don't use the Start Menu search for anything but programs. I create YouTube videos, often showing my computer, so I hide everything from the start menu but programs - to keep sensitive file names private. These are my Indexing Options:

The only indexed file is: C:\Users\tcno\AppData\Local\Stardock\Start10Ctrlpnl, where all of the shortcuts for control panel things are.

Start 11 Search options:

I am messy, and very busy, so I leave thousands of files in my Downloads folder, and other places. I also work lots with Node.js, so I have many node_modules folders with near infinite numbers of files in them. Over 6 drives I have 19.5TB space, with 8.9TB free. Files for each are: 60,887 - 723,314 - 952,191 - 377,426 - 1,278,228 - and on my C drive over 4 000 000. I would understand if it was indexing all of my drives but it should be indexing none of them. It also does not have any drive usage at the time of high CPU.

I even tried removing S11Search64.exe from the Program Files x86/Stardock/Start11 folder, then copying and renaming S11Search.exe to it. This only temporarily made a difference before an hour or so ticked by and the S11Sarch high CPU load kicked in again. There was no difference on my x64 system between the native x64 version and the x86 version.

2. Periodic crashing of Explorer.exe often without user interaction

While writing this I had 2 crashes of Explorer.exe. The first led me to finally detail my issues here on the forum, and the second was when I searched the Start menu for "Indexing", and clicked the Indexing Options item which opened the window seen above. That crash was caused again by the same dll, even though it was clicking on the Start11 Start Menu.

This is incredibly annoying as I have multiple windows open for multitasking and often need to reopen all explorer windows to get back to where I was a moment ago. Other windows stay unaffected, it's only Explorer.exe. The desktop goes blank/gray and comes back after Explorer.exe restarts. Windows as a whole is okay, no BSOD no nothing.

The first crash (random, and happens between every 10 minutes and an hour):

Faulting application name: Explorer.EXE, version: 10.0.22621.4169, time stamp: 0xdf363a33
Faulting module name: Start10_64.dll, version: 2.1.1.0, time stamp: 0x66d9d587
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000c7d6d
Faulting process id: 0x0x2768
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1DB3C1CE5E5C03E
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start11\Start10_64.dll
Report Id: ec82b5ad-b69a-4c9a-9e23-728f4e1c00f8
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 
Other possibly useful info:

The second crash (user-input caused):

Faulting application name: Explorer.EXE, version: 10.0.22621.4169, time stamp: 0xdf363a33
Faulting module name: Start10_64.dll, version: 2.1.1.0, time stamp: 0x66d9d587
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000ca563
Faulting process id: 0x0xBFC0
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1DB3DC446C0846D
Faulting application path: C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start11\Start10_64.dll
Report Id: 97fa51a2-d2a6-468f-8931-0057ce9d838c
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

I have set up WinDbg and am waiting for another crash so I can hopefully upload a crash log.

I run a lot on my computer. As we speak I have VSCode, Brave with 86 tabs, Firefox with 1 tab, NordVPN, ESET, OBS, Steam, KeePassXC, ShareX, GitHub Desktop and Thunderbird running. This is my usual workload with the brave tabs fluctuating between 10 and 100... Depending on my laziness and "I'll check this later"-ness

Doing different activities seems such as intensive gaming, to just spotify and news reading has no effect on the frequency of the random explorer crashing, or high CPU usage. I am truly at a loss here.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for your fantastic product.

EDIT: I have a dump. I am uncomfortable uploading it here as I'm unsure of the content included from my memory - Lots of sensitive stuff running. (also it's massive so I'm waiting for a possibly smaller one. Lots of explorer.exe stuff was open while I was getting file counts of my drives) Is there a way I can privately get a download link of the dump to you? I also asked on the Discord but haven't heard back yet.