Explorer.exe @ 100% CPU usage?

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You do not mention whether you are on a newtwork, what kind, Domain, cable
interenet, router, etc and the obvious, Antivirus software? This info would
help us to help you.
Frank L
 
We've had three machines where I work start doing this, apparently at
random, and I haven't a clue whats causing it. Within a couple of minutes of
logging in, the computer becomes almost completely unresponsive. Waiting for
the task manager to come up only tells me that its explorer.exe using 100%
of the cpu. Doesn't happen in safe mode, but i can't find any spyware etc.
on the machines. We're all on XP sp1....any thoughts?
 
I thank you for your assistance, however, as I said in my original post I
was unable to find any spyware/malware running on these machines. Not even
any executables in the task manager with suspicious names. This was the one
and only explorer, i.e. you terminate it in the task manager and your start
menu/desktop goes "bu'bye." And it was definately not an issue that could be
resolved by optimisation. Having something hog the entirety of your cpu
makes that kind of thing rather difficult. Any other ideas?
 
I had this problem with iexplore and explorer running 100%.

I downloaded and ran mozilla instead of I.E. now. Its been 3 days and
I've not had a single problem since then.

I ran norton, spybot, ad aware, hijack this, cwshredder.

I think there is a problem on some laptops with windows xp sp1 and
explorer. The only solution that has worked for me is using mozilla
instead of ie.

I used to get the problem 2 to 3 times a day and had to reboot. Its
been 3 days now and i'm keeping my fingers crossed!
 
I got it too one night on both my laptop (XP Home) and desktop (XP Pro)
simultaneously while crashing the internal network (computers couldn't see
each other) but leaving the internet gateway open. Got a suggestion that
helped and it was all caused by one file. Now, this file was acting
funny... an MPEG of a TV show I captured a while ago, sitting on the
physical drive of the desktop. From the laptop, across the network, I
tried to move it to a diferent folder. I was told "access denied, another
user or program has control blah blah" but nothing else was using it. Then
the laptop went to 100% on explorer.exe and started running about 200 page
faults per second. After a few minutes it was over 250,000 page faults!

I went to the desktop, opened up windows explorer to the media file and
tried to change the security settings to take full control of it, but got
the same message and same result. I thought virus and had all PCs on teh
network scan but got nothing 3 hours later.

Per advice to another user, I shut down everything, booted into the desktop
into safe mode and just deleted the Tv show MPEg. Turned on all and it was
all good. I think there was some cache problem with that file and it
caused explorer to loop endlessly. I reason that any damaged file may
cause a similar loop, so troubleshooting could be a nightmare but if you
can isolate it it may help.
 
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