Explorer.exe @ 100% Usage

YoungBlood · 30 Mar 2007 at 16:15

I have spent the last hour or so going through the suggestions that google throws up to fix this, but so far to no avail.

Starting today, in task manager my cpu usage for explorer.exe is constantly @ 50% as it's a dual core. So sorta technicaly 100%. As a result, gaming is pretty much a no no and I can see no reason for this to suddenly start happening.

I thought I would post here for suggestions while I continue to go through the suggestions on google, which so far have done nothing.

A full virus scan and spybot s&d was done today as it is every friday, anyone else ever exsperianced (sp?) this and could post there fix's. Im running XP SP2.

sniper007 · 30 Mar 2007 at 16:19

What did your spyware and antivirus runs find then? Is this a home machine? Do you have any network drives mapped?

YoungBlood · 30 Mar 2007 at 16:24

sniper007 said:
What did your spyware and antivirus runs find then? Is this a home machine? Do you have any network drives mapped?

Virus found nothing and spybot found nothing of intrest just the same thing about the windows built in firewall being disabled. It's a home machine and has no mapped drives I assume. It is not on a network so I guess it can't have? It does share a router with another PC though. Just for net access, no files/folders/drives are shared.

Just ran windows update, still same problem though.

I will also just add, that it is at 50% constantly no matter what I do, most of the google reports seem to say that it only happens when something is right clicked/opened. I have it all the time from bootup.

snowdog · 30 Mar 2007 at 23:10

50% on explorer.exe often happened on me after about 40 hours of using my pc, once I force it down other programs follow, only way to fix it is a reboot, I think its a windows bug as when i shut explorer, a 2nd program, a totally random one, in 3 seconds after shutting down explorer follows with locking up and 50% cpu usage.

Didnt happen to me though for like 6 weeks now, I don't know what has changed in the meantime.

EDIT: it didn't happen from bootup though, only after ta least 10 hours usually over 40 hours, and explorer was compeltly unusable when it happened...

t31os · 30 Mar 2007 at 23:20

If you havnt rebooted, end the explorer.exe from taskmanager, then click File > Run > type ' explorer.exe ' and see if the restarting it helps, it can get a bit iffy sometimes, but usually a quick reload of the shell helps, not always but usually.

YoungBlood · 31 Mar 2007 at 17:23

Just a little update on this. I found a programme called Process Explorer, it's just like task manager but a lot more detailed. It enables you to see the exact file that is causing the 100% CPU usage (in the case explorer.exe was calling on a .dll) and delete/un-register it.
Problem seems to be soved for now.

Durzel · 31 Mar 2007 at 17:51

YoungBlood said:
I have spent the last hour or so going through the suggestions that google throws up to fix this, but so far to no avail.

Starting today, in task manager my cpu usage for explorer.exe is constantly @ 50% as it's a dual core. So sorta technicaly 100%. As a result, gaming is pretty much a no no and I can see no reason for this to suddenly start happening.

I thought I would post here for suggestions while I continue to go through the suggestions on google, which so far have done nothing.

A full virus scan and spybot s&d was done today as it is every friday, anyone else ever exsperianced (sp?) this and could post there fix's. Im running XP SP2.

I've had this happen when I've opened a folder full of videos... I guess Explorer had problems rendering a thumbnail or something.

The only way I could fix it was by killing explorer.exe and restarting it.