Explorer service at 99%

[Dr Zoidberg.]

My home machine has picked up an annoying habit recently of the explorer
service going to 99% of CPU time which obviously causes the machine to slow
to a crawl.

Its an XP pro PC with SP1 and all patches applied.
Anti-virus is up to date and shows clear as does a spyware scan.

I'm probably going to re-install soon due to a new hard drive but it would
be nice to know what's causing this.

Any suggestions?

--
Alex

"I laugh in the face of danger"

"Then I hide until it goes away"

www.drzoidberg.co.uk

 

[Malke]

My home machine has picked up an annoying habit recently of the
explorer
service going to 99% of CPU time which obviously causes the machine to
slow to a crawl.

Its an XP pro PC with SP1 and all patches applied.
Anti-virus is up to date and shows clear as does a spyware scan.

I'm probably going to re-install soon due to a new hard drive but it
would be nice to know what's causing this.

Any suggestions?

Good news everyone! There's no way for us to know. (Dr. Z is my
favorite, too, although I love the Professor.) You've already done the
first two things normally suggested: the av scan and remove spyware.
Now check and see what services and programs are running in the
background. *Something* is taking cpu cycles. You have to do some
sherlocking now.

Malke

 

[Ed]

I have a sort-of similar problem: I usually get an error
msg not too long after starting up, telling me "Windows
Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close."
Well, I never started it! After the error, screen
refreshes and I lose a few of my icons on the right side
of the taskbar at the bottom. Things then tend to run a
bit slower. And I never even opened/started Explorer!
Been checking taskmgr and explorer.exe not eating up CPU
usage but it shows up on the list after I start my
confuser and consuming anywhere from 18,000K to 44,000K.
Afer I actually start Explorer it goes up to around
62,000K. Something is amiss here methinks. I feel your
pain. Maybe solution will help us both.
Ed.