N
Nebulon
Can anyone tell me what causes this?
I call it a "refresh spasm", because Explorer behaves as if somebody is
alt-tabbing to each open window in turn and choosing "refresh" from its
right-click menu when it happens.
It happens when I close an open Explorer window or navigate in it -- in
other words, when the contents of any folder quits being displayed by
some Explorer window (either because it was closed, or because it was
replaced in that window by the contents of a different folder).
Over a period of several seconds, each open window will, in turn, blank
and eventually refresh. Often image thumbnails need to be regenerated
when this happens, or icons (files show a "generic file" icon, then go
back to normal). If files were selected in any explorer window, they
get deselected when that window gets refreshed. The window also
scrolls, by itself, to the top left.
This happens without any other user action besides having closed an
Explorer window or navigated in one.
It always happens the first time such an action is taken after a
reboot. Subsequently, most such actions have no effect beyond the
expected. A "refresh spasm" has maybe a 1% chance of occurring, maybe
even less, each time, but the likelihood seems to rise with the number
of such actions taken since the last spasm.
The spams seem to be associated with a memory leak: the Explorer
process will grow by several megs each time. (However, Explorer also
leaks memory over time independently of spasms. Changing directories
seems to be one of those occasions, and the amount leaked is greater if
the directory switched to has more files and greater if they are images
and the view is thumbnails or filmstrip. In particular, switching to a
directory with 2000 images in thumbnail view packs on 50 meg(!) each
time, the upshot being going to and from such a directory at all
frequently necessitates frequent reboots. Using the picture/fax
previewer also seems to leak memory, and window handles. If enough of
those leak, the previewer, then explorer (particularly vis a vis
thumbnails and later any icons), and then other apps start
malfunctioning with "Drawing failed" in the picture/fax viewer and
missing toolbar buttons or semi-decorative things like borders in
application windows, and the whole system gets unstable. A system crash
will result eventually if you don't reboot once this problem becomes
apparent.)
I note that the observed problems have occurred under:
Windows 98
Windows XP Home
Windows XP Home SP1
Windows XP Home SP2
Windows XP Media Center Edition SP1
Windows XP Media Center Edition SP2
with ATI and with nVidia video cards, with several different AMD CPUs
(including single and dual core), with no non-Microsoft shell
extensions enabled, with no particular third party software
consistently present, and under a wide variety of circumstances
(including Safe Mode).
This independence of hardware and third-party software suggests a bug
in Explorer, or in the GDI API itself, rather than in any third-party
code. It also suggests a very long-standing bug that Microsoft
steadfastly refuses to fix, since it's been around for about *a decade*
and multiple versions of Windows and innumerable KBxyzwmn hotfixes
without disappearing or even being mitigated at all.
The bug seems to be in image and icon handling code, given its symptoms
and given the way the worst leaks and glitches associated with it are
concentrated around user activities involving thumbnails, the filmstrip
view, and the picture/fax previewer.
Disabling the generation of thumbs.db files saves disk space but
doesn't affect this issue. Disabling indexing service likewise.
Does anyone know of a workaround, or even an explanation for this wacky
behavior?
I call it a "refresh spasm", because Explorer behaves as if somebody is
alt-tabbing to each open window in turn and choosing "refresh" from its
right-click menu when it happens.
It happens when I close an open Explorer window or navigate in it -- in
other words, when the contents of any folder quits being displayed by
some Explorer window (either because it was closed, or because it was
replaced in that window by the contents of a different folder).
Over a period of several seconds, each open window will, in turn, blank
and eventually refresh. Often image thumbnails need to be regenerated
when this happens, or icons (files show a "generic file" icon, then go
back to normal). If files were selected in any explorer window, they
get deselected when that window gets refreshed. The window also
scrolls, by itself, to the top left.
This happens without any other user action besides having closed an
Explorer window or navigated in one.
It always happens the first time such an action is taken after a
reboot. Subsequently, most such actions have no effect beyond the
expected. A "refresh spasm" has maybe a 1% chance of occurring, maybe
even less, each time, but the likelihood seems to rise with the number
of such actions taken since the last spasm.
The spams seem to be associated with a memory leak: the Explorer
process will grow by several megs each time. (However, Explorer also
leaks memory over time independently of spasms. Changing directories
seems to be one of those occasions, and the amount leaked is greater if
the directory switched to has more files and greater if they are images
and the view is thumbnails or filmstrip. In particular, switching to a
directory with 2000 images in thumbnail view packs on 50 meg(!) each
time, the upshot being going to and from such a directory at all
frequently necessitates frequent reboots. Using the picture/fax
previewer also seems to leak memory, and window handles. If enough of
those leak, the previewer, then explorer (particularly vis a vis
thumbnails and later any icons), and then other apps start
malfunctioning with "Drawing failed" in the picture/fax viewer and
missing toolbar buttons or semi-decorative things like borders in
application windows, and the whole system gets unstable. A system crash
will result eventually if you don't reboot once this problem becomes
apparent.)
I note that the observed problems have occurred under:
Windows 98
Windows XP Home
Windows XP Home SP1
Windows XP Home SP2
Windows XP Media Center Edition SP1
Windows XP Media Center Edition SP2
with ATI and with nVidia video cards, with several different AMD CPUs
(including single and dual core), with no non-Microsoft shell
extensions enabled, with no particular third party software
consistently present, and under a wide variety of circumstances
(including Safe Mode).
This independence of hardware and third-party software suggests a bug
in Explorer, or in the GDI API itself, rather than in any third-party
code. It also suggests a very long-standing bug that Microsoft
steadfastly refuses to fix, since it's been around for about *a decade*
and multiple versions of Windows and innumerable KBxyzwmn hotfixes
without disappearing or even being mitigated at all.
The bug seems to be in image and icon handling code, given its symptoms
and given the way the worst leaks and glitches associated with it are
concentrated around user activities involving thumbnails, the filmstrip
view, and the picture/fax previewer.
Disabling the generation of thumbs.db files saves disk space but
doesn't affect this issue. Disabling indexing service likewise.
Does anyone know of a workaround, or even an explanation for this wacky
behavior?