I'm having the explorer.exe problem with a slightly different flavor... not only is explorer.exe taking up my resources, but I also can perform no network actions at all with that computer. I can't connect to the internet, or my home network. It simply won't see the router... I've tried the methods described here, plus anti-virus/adaware and nothing works. Does anyone know what might be the issue for me?

After a clean Windows XP install, Anti Virus AVG 6 , install virus
protection before you hit the Net, Downloaded and installed all 14-Win
critical updates, 11- Win system updates and 3 - driver updates.
So far everything is good.
I was not able to stay on the Net for more than 2 min, until I used
The Blaster worm remover tool and AVG 6 found and fixed 12 viruses.
Once I got all the Critical and System updates installed, its all good.
Download the Blaster worm tool and AVG 6 virus program, load them up,
before you hit the net for your updates.

I hope mine stays well and yours gets better. Good luck all. Mac66.

I was having this problem too, also caused by a bad file. After finally realizing the file I couldn't delete was connected to teh explorer.exe problem, I was able to find this thread and all the solutions given. But since I am lazy and chicken to mess too much with my computer ( I tend to make it worse!) I read every thing and then came up with an easier fix that seems to have worked for me.

Since I couldn't click on the file to delete it, I moved the files I wanted to keep into another folder, then deleted the folder with the bad file. Perhaps it will work for others who are reluctant to mess with the dos or safe modes.

Well like all of you I encountered this problem. My IT department said to just go buy Norton Antivirus and that will take care of everything. I wasn't about to drop 50 bucks without trying other things so I found this fantastic site and read all your posts. I do some basic DVD authoring on my pc so I was interested in the corrupt video file theory. Like in every other case I couldn't access any folders or My Computer unless I was in safe mode or DOS but from there I killed all the video files I recently created. I rebooted but that didn't help. I then started searching for files created around the time that this started happening and that didn't turn up anything suspicious. Then just for the hell of it I decided to do a Scandisk or whatever that error checking utility is that you access by clicking the tools tab of your drive. That utility found and error, fixed it and now my computer is working fine, better than before actually. The bad sector was in the Documents and Settings subfolder but it wouldn't display the entire path so I can't tell exactly what it fixed. It seems that this explorer problem is a symptom of many different things but my only advice is to do the basics, such as scandisk, before blowing money or reformatting your drive, it worked for me anyway.

Ken B.

Hey all, for those of you who have Windows XP and are getting this nasty glitch where Explorer.exe uses a lot of resources, try this:

1. Open up the command prompt by clicking Start, Run, and type in "cmd" (without the quotes) into the text box.
2. When the command prompt opens up, type in "chkdsk /f c:" (again without the quotes)
3. If the C drive is where your Windows directory is, then it will ask you if you would like to schedule the check on the next startup, since it requires exclusive access to it. Simply type in "y" (without quotes) and press Enter.
4. Restart your computer and the chkdsk program will be the first thing that runs when Windows first loads.
5. It might take a while depending on how big your hard-drive is.

This will work just like the ScanDisk program found in Windows 98 and ME. It will search for corrupt files and attempt to fix them just like ScanDisk does. If you have multiple drives or partitions, simply replace the "c:" part of the command with the drive letter of the drive you want to check.

Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes in solving this problem.

Hey guys,
This might seem really trivial for many of you, but my suggestion is to start using Adaware. It is a *FREE* program that will help you get rid of 90% of the pop-ups, check for spyware etc. If you want to learn more, go to this link http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/
I had the same problem with Internet explorer, followed the advice to get rid of the spyware(I did that using Adaware) and now I'm back in business.
Hope this helps!
Joana.

I want to say thanks to Jeff Spindler for his sugestion about the FilMon program, and then the solution to why explorer.exe tried to access the files SETUPAPI.dll, and SysSetup.dll. Well, my problem was that I had my iPAQ and Mp3 player connected to USB-ports. I unplugged booth of them and now it's running smooth. Who would have thaught of that?

I also started with to uninstall the Google toolbar, and after that the usage went down from 99 to around 30%. So my advice if you have the google toolbar, go to the site and search instead!

I had the same problem. It was because I had large zip files on c:\ (the directory I couldn't display). XP tries to treat zip files as directories, so I guess it was opening and reading the zip files and that is why it took so long to display c:\.

Same thing happened to me, it happened when I try to open a particular video file (always a video file?!) and what I did was to move all the uncorrupted files out of that folder and then delete the folder with the file in it. It'll go to the recycle bin. But if you have too much large files in that folder, dont bother, just use the DOS delete command, it's much more effecient.

one more thing, for those of you having this same problem, be aware that some other processes/applications may cause the same problem to arrise again, for example: When I clicked on a web page that is corrupted and cant load, that particular Internet explorer page will use up 100% of my CPU too!!!. A few forum members from another forum said that it could be due to winXP running with only 256Mb of ram, the file paging operation will cause the CPU to run at 100% due to continous file paging, they suggest I use at least 512MB of ram to run WinXp. This problem is specific to WinXP, lower version of Windows doesnt or rarely encounter this.

Had this problem for a while and it seems to have resolved itself by clearing out corrupt video files.

However, I've not got a similar problem and it's not just explorer... periodically something is hogging loads of system resources and the mouse starts lagging etc.

Anyone else observing mouse lag behaviour like this at times of high CPU usage?

I'm on XP Pro with plenty of RAM. Viruses and spyware checked.

Had this problem for a while and it seems to have resolved itself by clearing out corrupt video files.

However, I've not got a similar problem and it's not just explorer... periodically something is hogging loads of system resources and the mouse starts lagging etc.

Anyone else observing mouse lag behaviour like this at times of high CPU usage?

I'm on XP Pro with plenty of RAM. Viruses and spyware checked.

Hey they call it MicroJunk Winblows for a reason.

Inflated cartoonish stupid non-user friendly bunch of garbage HA!!!!!!!!

Microsoft's idea of 'user friendliness': Clouds

To all:

The system resource problem relating to Video files - usually avi files has been discuss on mine and other previous posts as well as the solution which required some manual registry editing.

I have found another simple way to fix this problem - it has worked perfectly. Go ge the file xpavifix at

http://download.divfix.maxeline.com/xpavifix.zip

Open the zip file and read the copying.txt info - Extract files to a folder and run xpavifix.exe.

Hope this helps...

Clyde

Mine is probably due to AVI file that I've downloaded with a P2P. Whenever I start Windows Explorer / Recycle Bin, total CPU usage jump to 100%.

Found a few solutions here and will try it out tonite. Will post result tomorrow.

Without explore.exe the windows taskbar and many other windows components wouldn't be there. There are alternatives to explore.exe like Geoshells and Aston, they only take up about 5000k of memory usage and they are totally cooler than the standard boring windows explore.exe

I believe the website for Geoshells is Geoshells.com if not then type it in on google
Aston also has a site but i forget it so try google

Note: IEXPLORE is Internet Explorer different from explorer.exe

Ok my problem is solved. Tried running Process Explorer as recommended by some, but still wasn't able to delete the corrupted AVI file. (I ended explorer.exe and restart it again but still 100% CPU usage)

So I tried the second option. Deleted the AVI file thru DOS Command and everything went smoothly since.

I have found many resources discussing 100% CPU usage and memory leak.
Method 1.
A few days ago I posted a link to get "xpavifix.zip" - That link seems to be down now but you can get it at http://hem.passagen.se/donmatteo/xpavifix.zip

Once you open and extract this zip file the is an automated registry update that will correct the problem, (you can back up the registry first if you like or make a system restore point - but it has worked fine for me.)

Method 2.
Also there is a German site that discusses this in detail, You can translate the page by opening Google Translation at
http://www.google.com/language_tools?q=xpavifix+download&hl=en&lr=
(CUT and PASTE the ENTIRE LINE above only part of the link got highlighted (why??)

Then enter http://www.windows-tweaks.info/html/cpu-auslastung.html.

The registry hack in Step 4 on windows-tweaks is the one most worth noting --- the translation will be a bit rough - but it should be understandable if your familar with Windows.

Either one of these methods will give you immediate results in Windows XP.

It worked on my system a Dell 8200, 1GB RAM, nVidia 5200 Graphics card, 80GB & 120GB HD.

Good luck, keep me posted on your success!

Clyde