Explorer taking up 100% of CPU in XP Home

[Burt Johnson]

I've seen a few messages on this topic, but only the tail of the threads
are still on the server, and they did not have enough information to
tell me how to fix this -- only that I am not alone with the problem.

I am running XP Home on a 1-year old generic PC. Everything was working
well until yesterday. I had a monitor suddenly die in the middle of an
Outlook Express session. Having no view of how to reach the proper
shutdown dialog, I powered down via front panel power button.

After fixing the monitor (turned out the power supply had died), I
powered back up. Now I get "CPU Usage: 100%" in the task manager, which
shows that 99% is going to explorer.exe.

The system works, but so slowly that it is nearly impossible to do
anything. I am typing this on another machine (actually a Mac connected
via KVM to the same peripherals).

I tried rebooting several times, with no change in result. I tried
leaving it alone for 6 hours, with no change in behavior. I tried
removing the network connection prior to reboot, with no change.

I tried deleting 'explorer.exe.' That did work to give me control of
the CPU, but with no desktop, I wasn't sure what to do next, so that
wasn't really much help (other than verifying that it is the explorer
that seems hung up in a loop or some such).

I have ZoneAlarm Pro for a firewall, plus have QuickKeys running. I had
SETI@Home running too, but I deleted that (while in safe mode) to see if
it was an issue -- no change.

Ideas? What is causing this, and how do I go about fixing it?

I have a retrospect backup that is only a few days old. Nothing major
would be lost if reverting to it were done, but I don't even know how to
do that if the machine is hung up like this.

 

[ZyRiX]

Google search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=100%+explorer.exe&btnG=Google+Search

 

[Burt Johnson]

Google search


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=100%+explorer.exe&btnG=
Google+Search

I use Google quite a lot, but didn't realize it could access nntp forums
too. Thanks for the pointer!

Unfortunately, I can't find anything there that helps. LOTS of
discussion of explorer.exe taking 100% of cpu, but they all seem to
relate to it happening when right-clicking on an item, or trying to run
an avi file, or some similar.

In my case, it happens on boot immediately, before I mouse to anything.
It also happens even when the computer is disconnected from the network.

Any other ideas?

 

[ZyRiX]

Sorry thats all I have at this point

 

[Burt Johnson]

Sorry thats all I have at this point

Thanks for the pointer and trying to help!

As it happens, I just managed to fix it. Bit of black magic, standing
on my head with a bowl on one foot while facing West, but it works
now...

Well, actually there was a _bit_ more than that needed.

I opened the task manager, selected 'explorer.exe' and stopped that
process. Ignored the warnings, and took about 10 minutes to complete,
but it finally did.

I then relaunched 'explorer.exe'. Seemed to work OK. I did a fairly
lengthy Outlook Express session, which worked fine.

I then took the plunge. I told XP to restart. It came up fine and I am
using it now.

I'm guessing that some file was corrupted, and that doing the
force-quit, relaunch sequence got it cleared out. I have no idea which
file though, or even any proof that this was the actual cause.

Oh well, another mystery to stick on my shelf and wonder about...

 

[relic]

Thanks for the pointer and trying to help!

As it happens, I just managed to fix it. Bit of black magic, standing
on my head with a bowl on one foot while facing West, but it works
now...

Well, actually there was a _bit_ more than that needed.

I opened the task manager, selected 'explorer.exe' and stopped that
process. Ignored the warnings, and took about 10 minutes to complete,
but it finally did.

I then relaunched 'explorer.exe'. Seemed to work OK. I did a fairly
lengthy Outlook Express session, which worked fine.

I then took the plunge. I told XP to restart. It came up fine and I
am using it now.

I'm guessing that some file was corrupted, and that doing the
force-quit, relaunch sequence got it cleared out. I have no idea
which file though, or even any proof that this was the actual cause.

Oh well, another mystery to stick on my shelf and wonder about...

Check the Google _Groups_ discussions:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=100% explorer.exe&num=20&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&sa=N&tab=wg

 

[Andy]

Burt,

Two thoughts. One, Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore might
get you back to a satisfactorily working status, or it might not. The System
Restore will at times declare that you cannot restore to the chosen
checkpoint. When this is the case I fall back on my most recent working
backup. I have a 160 GB HD for just such backups. Currently it holds three
generations of backups. I back up the entire C drive every other day using
Norton Ghost (part of Norton SystemWorks). I don't know what I would do
without such backups.

Hope this helps.

Andy