Why does OpenFileDialog freeze WinForms app on a specific machine?

Question

I have a WinForms app deployed to multiple machines in the same office. Up until this Monday, all users in the office used the app without issue and used the OpenFileDialog to select files to import. One machine had lots of updates to other apps and now freezes when our app tries to show the OpenFileDialog. It shows the OpenFolderDialog fine; though I failed to try the SaveFileDialog. Just to repeat, it worked last week, our app was not updated, but it freezes on one machine this week whereas it works on all other machines in the office.

The machine in question has another .NET app installed and I verified the OpenFileDialog opens without issue in the other app.

Any ideas as to why the OpenFileDialog would freeze on one machine? Any ideas on how to fix this? We could try reinstalling without knowing the cause, but I figured it is better to investigate why to prevent it from happening again.

Answer 1

This machine may have connected to a network resource in the past, which is no longer available. OpenFileDialog could be waiting for the network resource to respond, which will take several minutes to timeout.