But I am getting closer to finding the solution. So far I've ruled out a long list of hardware and software related things, but after yet another Explorer.exe crash last night followed by a running of sfc /scannow, I decided to look at CBS.log to find out what was actually being corrupted whenever this happened. So I went into log with Notepad and searched for all instances of the word "Corrupt" and I found five instances of it. In all five instances of this word, the accompanying file was exactly the same file: usbhub.sys.mui.

I did some reading online and it's still pretty inconclusive, though there was some mention of power shortages to USB ports as a possible reason for the corruption of that particular file. Since I have exhausted all possible hardware causes except the CPU and the problem persists even without updating Windows, I figure it has to be either a driver problem of some sort, or the CPU itself, even though none of the documentation I've been able to find says anything about the CPU causing this particular problem. There is, however, one possible exception concerning the CPU, and that is that newer CPU's will often have the memory controller on the CPU die itself, and since the problems have continued across three different motherboards and three different sets of RAM, it may be that the memory controller in question on my AMD FX 8350 is having problems since the power outage several months ago damaged several parts of my computer thanks to a faulty surge protector.

So unless I somehow find out that the problem is caused by a driver conflict I haven't discovered yet, I think it's safe to say that I will be having to replace my CPU soon.