Explorer.exe Problem

[RJM]

I have a problem with explorer.exe in WinXP home SP2 on FAT32. The problem is that

When I open a window to view my disk contents the window opens but an hourglass

Appears about every two seconds for about one second and my cpu usage follows this

Pattern jumping to 26% and back down to zero. Exiting explorer stops the CPU usage but if you restart explorer

the problem returns, only re-booting and this only fixes the problem about 50% of the time. Does any one have any

ideas about what could be wrong or how to fix the problem?

Thanks

Sys specs in sig.

Edited April 19, 2007 by RJM

[Andromeda43]

Hi Titusville, Ocala here,

Have you tried to run any HD maintenance?

Chkdsk? Defrag? Clean out all the junk?

Have you run any AV and/or AS scans?

Have you gone into MSCONFIG and shut down all unneeded TSR's?

Have you shut down (disabled) unneeded Services?

Everything I've mentioned here can impact system performance and so impact Windows Explorer.

If you've got 100,000 or more temporary internet files on your HD,

explorer WILL be slow to open as it has to read the directories for all those files.

I recently took over 500,000 junk files off of a customers PC.

It was slower than crap, opening Explorer and doing many other operations.

I also run all my HD's in FAT-32 mode and I use XP-Pro+SP2.

I've never noticed any particular problem running Windows Exploder.

I usually open exploder with the 'window + E key' combination.

I just tried it and Explorer opens in less than a second.

But then, I keep my HD squeeky clean.

Windows doesn't have to work very hard to read it.

Cheers Mate!

Andromeda43 B)

[Jeremy]

Use CCleaner to clean out the junk.

Scan your system for malware with Ad-Aware SE Personal v1.06 and Spybot S&D v1.4.

Scan your system for viruses with Kaspersky (trialware), Avast (freeware) or AntiVir (freeware).

Clean and defragment your registry with jv16 PowerTools 2006.

Defragment your HDD with JKDefrag (freeware) or a trial version of Diskeeper, PerfectDisk or UltimateDefrag.

Download and run Dial-A-Fix, check everything off and click Go.

How is it now?

[Zxian]

Can I ask you why you're using FAT32? There's a good long discussion here outlining why FAT32 is obsolete compared to NTFS, especially if you're using Windows 2000 or higher. On your 250GB drives, you'll get MUCH better performance using NTFS.

To convert your drives from FAT32 to NTFS, use the convert command:

convert C: /FS:NTFS[code]

See if the problem persists after that.

[RJM]

I use Ccleaner and defrag my C drive every weekend, I ran AdAware and spybot

(Deleted 14 cookies) I have indexing disabled. I have AVG 7.5 free for antivirus,

Scanned no problems found. I haven’t tried dial-a-fix yet and will on the weekend.

And defrag my d drive.

I started explorer.exe viewing my drive contents and it worked fine for about ½ hour then the same problem. In task manager process running cpu usage goes from

Idle 99% to explorer.exe 24% back and forth every two seconds. With explorer.exe closed cpu usage stayes idle 99%.

Thanks for the replies.

Zxian: I dual boot Dos and XP which is a good reason to use FAT32

I do have a 20G NTFS partition on one of my hard drives for large files. I

Really don’t like semi-Journaling file systems and don’t want to start a debate about which file system is faster, better, more secure, or advanced.

Edited April 20, 2007 by RJM

[cluberti]

That's very odd, although I have seen this before with 3rd party firewall software.

Consider downloading ShellExView from nirsoft.net and disabling all non-Microsoft explorer shell extensions, and perhaps autoruns from sysinternals to disable all non-Microsoft items. If that works, you can start re-enabling things until the culprit is found.

[RJM]

I think I might know what the problem is. When I installed windows I did not

have ACHI turned on in BIOS and later after installing windows I turned it on.

I found this post about how to properly turn on ACHI from within windows and will

try it this weekend also.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/in...hp/t457699.html

This seems to have done the trick, no problems since Thursday.

Edited April 23, 2007 by RJM