I run windows XP in an oracle VM virtualbox. If XP inc Windows Explorer makes changes to a folder, I believe this causes Thunar to hang. I'd need to do some more in-depth diagnosis but it seems that switching back to Thunar after editing files, I tend to find Thunar has hung / frozen / crashed at some point. Conversely, if Thunar/Linux makes changes to files/folders, Windows Explorer doesn't recognise these changes but doesn't hang, and you can force refresh the view with F5 and all is well. Experiences are generally with files edited with Word (& associated $word_temp_files.docx), Excel, or simply renamed. Cheers. Thunar 1.6.11 on Xubuntu 16.10.
Might be fixed in thunar 1.6.12. Can you test (it has been backported to (x)ubuntu 17.04 too)
Just updated to 1.6.12 so will set a reminder to update here if it no longer occurs. Annoyingly I didn't have a guaranteed way of making it break before, for easy testing now. But I'm going to be using the VM today and for the next few days so hopefully I'll find out!
I'm also running a WinXP VM and I have mapped a shared folder with Gigolo. File changes made in Thunar reflect in Windows Explorer almost instantaneously, but changes made in Explorer do not appear in Thunar, a refresh is needed. No crash or hang in any case.
Probably fixed since then, please reopen if not.