Two "explorer.exe" tasks

[Diamontina Cocktail]

My machine normally goes just fine. However, every now and then it bogs down
like I am running it on a P3 1ghz (I am using a P4 3Ghz with only 1 gig DDR
on an 80gig IDE which I know isn't the best of ways to do it but no dough to
change for a while yet) and goes so slowly that folders can take 30 seconds
to open, programs even longer. When this happens, I check task manager and
there are 2 x explorer.exe instances running. I shut everything down such as
open folders, programs and such and am only showing the desktop and nothing
else running yet both explorer.exe instances are still running. If I reboot,
all goes well again until next time the same thing happens. I cannot pin the
start of the second explorer.exe down to anything I happen to be doing
though I realise it is more than likely I have done something to have had
that happen.

Has anyone any idea WHY this happens? Thanks.

 

[John Barnes]

Why don't you try shutting down the latest explorer.exe to start up and
watch what stops. Before you do this, go to Task Manager and on the
applications page in the lower right corner, start a new task, in the box
enter explorer.exe and start it and see what happens. You can go to the
processes page and end it there. Then the next time you have a problem with
the two explorer, you can shut them down one at a time and see if your
problem clears up without rebooting. One will basically clear your desktop
and taskbar, but you can restart in the apps area or file on the processes.
At worst, you can restart your machine running shutdown.exe /r in the new
task box

 

[Diamontina Cocktail]

Why don't you try shutting down the latest explorer.exe to start up and
watch what stops. Before you do this, go to Task Manager and on the
applications page in the lower right corner, start a new task, in the box
enter explorer.exe and start it and see what happens. You can go to the
processes page and end it there. Then the next time you have a problem
with
the two explorer, you can shut them down one at a time and see if your
problem clears up without rebooting. One will basically clear your
desktop
and taskbar, but you can restart in the apps area or file on the
processes.
At worst, you can restart your machine running shutdown.exe /r in the
new task box

When you shut the wrong explorer.exe down, the computer shuts down with it.
That is fairly normal. Under XP if this happened it was easy to see which
was the one that was OK to shut down, it was always the smallest one. In
Vista that isn't always the case.