Media Keys freeze explorer

[LiE]

Anyone had this issue before?

When I press play/pause media key or skip track, explorer freezes for 20 seconds where things like Windows key and Alt-Tab don't work, then it just comes back. Sometimes explorer.exe crashes. After a reboot it works for a while but it randomly starts happening again. I've tried killing off all background processes to see if it's a dodgy app but that that hasn't worked.

Tried with 2 different keyboards, same issue.

The event log isn't very helpful either.

- System
- Provider
[ Name] Application Hang
- EventID 1002
[ Qualifiers] 0
Version 0
Level 2
Task 101
Opcode 0
Keywords 0x80000000000000
- TimeCreated
[ SystemTime] 2021-03-11T11:01:16.8717764Z
EventRecordID 4920
Correlation
- Execution
[ ProcessID] 0
[ ThreadID] 0
Channel Application
Computer DESKTOP-NOUK7AF
Security
- EventData
explorer.exe
10.0.19041.746
3c68
01d71654782aff65
0
C:\Windows\explorer.exe
4dc01bec-91f0-473d-b751-926d795ed660
Cross-thread
430072006F00730073002D007400680072006500610064000000430072006F00730073002D00700072006F00630065007300730000000000
Binary data:

In Words

0000: 00720043 0073006F 002D0073 00680074
0010: 00650072 00640061 00430000 006F0072
0020: 00730073 0070002D 006F0072 00650063
0030: 00730073 00000000

In Bytes

0000: 43 00 72 00 6F 00 73 00 C.r.o.s.
0008: 73 00 2D 00 74 00 68 00 s.-.t.h.
0010: 72 00 65 00 61 00 64 00 r.e.a.d.
0018: 00 00 43 00 72 00 6F 00 ..C.r.o.
0020: 73 00 73 00 2D 00 70 00 s.s.-.p.
0028: 72 00 6F 00 63 00 65 00 r.o.c.e.
0030: 73 00 73 00 00 00 00 00 s.s.....

 

[Le Samourai]

A while ago, Explorer used to freeze for me with the green bar slowly moving across and I'd have to end its process to get it going again or restart.
Pretty sure it was Bitdefender doing it for me.

 

[t31os]

A constant would be the drive if the issue is carrying across peripherals, got a spare drive you can clone to or swap in to test? Any overclocks? (tested removed if so?).

 

[LiE]

I think I narrowed it down to Spotify, removed it and installed it from Windows store and it seems to be behaving.