HELP, CPU usage is ridiculous

[zfuture]

Ok yesterday I came back from uni to move back home and I hooked up my computer. Nothing happened yesterday, but today after 20 minutes of using the computer my computer starts hanging and is slow. I restarted then it happens 5 minutes later. CPU usage is very high in the 90's and it seems that explorer.exe is using the bulk of the memory and resources for some reason.

I usually have a few programs open and this does not happen. Even having 1 program open this happens. Is it because I plugged the computer into a different network and thers something happening in the background?



System: P4 2.8 ghz , 1.0 gb 400 mhz ram, using windows xp


i've also just scanned for viruses to find none.

 

[zfuture]

explorer.exe seems to use over 120 000 kb for some reason. it fluctuates from that to 160 to 93 then in the 100's again.

 

[furie27]

Probably too many items starting up at boot. In regedit, check hkeylocalmachine/software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/run disable everything that you don't need.

 

[Saist]

eesh...

that doesn't sound good if IE is doing that.

 

[zfuture]

I've always had the same amount of startup items. It just suddenly occured yesterday and today for some reason...I haven't been doing anything special.

 

[furie27]

What happens when you use task manager to kill explorer and restart it?

 

[zfuture]

when i end explorer.exe in processes.... everything goes away (start button, icons, everything) and what is left is my background.

Cpu usage goes down to 0-3 % and when I open up explorer.exe again by going to 'new task', everything returns to normal and cpu usage is low again like it always was before this problem started.

Why does this happen and how can I fix it

 

[furie27]

The last time I was having this problem, I just reformatted and reinstalled XP. I don't really have much patience for this kind of thing because it's usually a symptom of worse things to come.

 

[MichaelZ]

i've seen this kind of thing happen at work.

does this occur out of no where or only after you do a certain thing? this problem occured when i tried to play a DivX format .AVI file on a system with the same problem. it doesn't play and CPU usage shoots up to 100% and all used up by explorer.exe

not sure why it happens, format would be the best thing to do because it's not hardware related.

 

[furie27]

i82lazyboy makes a good point. explorer will often balloon, if the cpu's forced to handle work usually done by a peripheral device. Have you noticed any other programs running when this happens?

 

[DanTMWTMP]

this is pretty common. I just kill explorer in task manager..then run it again (in task manager--> file, run, type in "explorer")

 

[MichaelZ]

sorry to be off topic.

Dan, your room mate's quotes are the funniest! lol

 

[LiLithTecH]

Creative Audio's Helper (cthelper.exe) and nVidia Help(nvsvc32.exe)
are two Services that are known to really eat up CPU cycles.

Explorer will normally consume between 6-40meg of ram when running.

 

[dWhisper]

Try this.

Start, Run, and type in MSCONFIG (In windows XP, this is a lot more efficient than navigating through the registry for startup items)

Go to the "Startups" tab, and just put a list of here for us to look at. In XP, the only things you really need in there would be your Anti-Virus software.

Also, I'd probably recommned nabbing SpyBot or Ad-Aware, and running it. If Explorer is jumping up that high, I'd guess that something that's imbedded itself into the shell is acting flaky.

When you're talking 1GB or RAM on a 2.8GHz system, your normal startup items won't eat a lot of resources. Something shoving your CPU usage that high is very unusual.

Oh, and just as a wild shot in the dark, I don't suppose you've put 3D Studio Max R5 and Norton Anti-Virus 2003 on that system together before this started...

 

[zfuture]

Everybody that replied, thanks for all of your help.

As to the problem, it is finally fixed. It turns out that there was a corrupt video file in a folder and whenever that folder was opened or as long as that file existed, explorer.exe seemed to screw up. I couldn't delete that file, but I deleted it after a while of trying.

Now, the problem doesn't occur anymore. However, it does occur when you right click a video file or large file without left clicking it first for some reason. When you do that, explorer balloons in cpu usage.

 

[kleankutken]

Yes.......it is a video file that causes the problem you mentioned. NOTHING to do with your startup, viruses, spybot or anything else.

 

[mechBgon]

Explorer is probably trying to generate a little preview at the left side of the window like it does by default. With a *ahem* large video file, it could take a long time to kick one out.