As I've posted about before, PhpStorm tends to cause BSODs whenever I open a file selection dialog, but no one backed me up on that. Now I have more clues. Recently, my computer started giving BSODs shortly after logging into Windows. (Unrelated to PhpStorm, at least I hope.) I ended up having to reinstall Windows. In the meantime, I borrowed a PC that had the same version of Windows (Windows 10 1903). I installed PhpStorm, had no BSOD problems, then I installed WSL and the same BSOD issue started appearing. I uninstalled WSL and the problem went away.

Windows 10 1903 added a significant feature to WSL: The ability to browse a WSL distro in File Explorer. Could this new feature somehow be causing BSODs when PhpStorm launches a file explorer dialog? However, this problem does not occur with any other program, which is puzzling. Then again, PhpStorm is the only Java-based program I use. All other programs use the native file explorer to select files, whereas PhpStorm has its own custom UI. It's also the only program where I've noticed the file explorer dialog tends to take awhile to load directories. I know it's scanning directories for projects, could it be scanning my WSL distro and that's when the BSOD gets triggered? I have no idea, but if that's it then I would like to know if I can turn off scanning for projects.

Anyway, I was hoping somebody out there had any ideas to contribute about this. As an addendum, when I reinstalled Windows on my computer I upgraded it to Windows 10 1909. I'm hoping this version fixes whatever WSL was doing to trigger BSODs. I've installed PhpStorm, but have avoided using any file selector buttons. Right now I'm in the middle of restoring a backup of my personal files and I don't want to interrupt that (assuming the BSOD issue is still there). As soon as that finishes I'll see if I can trigger the BSOD, and if I can then I'm contacting Microsoft.