its still better to replace it since Explorer will still be searching for it, in your case it won't find it, but is still linked to it... when replaced with dud, it will find it, but as dud's nature is, will unload it/self instantly you can alternatively hit ctrl+alt+del too see if anything else eats CPU time while your Explorer is lagging Offtopic: I even wonder would same thing help windows 7 too as I see same file in sys32 and loading thumbnails on any file lags Explorer too (tho not that much as on XP)