what up with explorer.exe in xp?

[benjamit]

why does the .exe bog down my systems?

win2k doesn't do this; in fact i think that every new version of windows gets slower and fuller of stuff that people don't use

i can stop explorer.exe in xp and still have other programs running but that means most of the gui is not seen (i didn't want to restart since i was d/l)

any thoughts?

 

[ProviaFan]

First, we need to know what your system specs are...
Then, you need to realize (if you don't know), that explorer.exe is the "start menu" program that does your desktop and taskbar et al. As for it "bogging down" your system, you need to be a little more specific. Is it pegging the CPU usage at 100%, or is it just taking up RAM, or what? (press CTRL+ALT+DEL to get the task manager and tell us what it says about explorer.exe in there)
BTW, I hope you know, it is normal for explorer to take up to 20MB or so of RAM in WinXP.

 

[benjamit]

i have a gig of ram and i would be happy if anything i have takes up that much

no matter what i do i never come close to using that much

the machine is a dual p3 866 with a 694d msi board, g450 vid, 2 roms, 3 hdds, zip, floppy, 1394 pci, 10/100 nic, ata 100 pci, 2 mons, 3 printers, scanner, dazzle

i know that explorer.exe is the start menu, etc. and for some reason sometimes it gets the cpus close to full load

under the processes in task manager explorer.exe says ~50

i can end the .exe but then the start menu, trash bin is no longer seen and thus no longer useable

one thing that i believe is that new installs have a break in period before that act normally, it's voodoo, i know but that's what i feel

 

[ProviaFan]

<< i have a gig of ram and i would be happy if anything i have takes up that much
no matter what i do i never come close to using that much
the machine is a dual p3 866 with a 694d msi board, g450 vid, 2 roms, 3 hdds, zip, floppy, 1394 pci, 10/100 nic, ata 100 pci, 2 mons, 3 printers, scanner, dazzle
i know that explorer.exe is the start menu, etc. and for some reason sometimes it gets the cpus close to full load
under the processes in task manager explorer.exe says ~50
i can end the .exe but then the start menu, trash bin is no longer seen and thus no longer useable
one thing that i believe is that new installs have a break in period before that act normally, it's voodoo, i know but that's what i feel >>


Ok, it's definitely not a PEBCAK error then. 😀
It sounds to me like your explorer.exe is truly FUBAR in some way (I've done several WinXP installs and none of them have shown this problem). Sorry, I really don't know what to advise you to do in this situation. 🙁

 

[stash]

Does it do this as soon as the machine is booted, or does it start while you have some programs running?

 

[Dreadogg]

<< (I've done several WinXP installs and none of them have shown this problem). Sorry, I really don't know what to advise you to do in this situation. >>

I have seen this before and the solution we came up with was to reinstall! my explorer cpu usage is at like 0 % and the mem is 15,600! If I was you I would just reinstall the OS you might have had a bad install! Also a trojan could cause this too! try scanning for them maybe thats it!

 

[benjamit]

thanks guys

it does this after several minutes, sometimes hours

i think it has to do with a bad driver for a dual slot flash reader that i have; the xp auto install says that the driver version may not be fully xp compatible and that it may cause os problems

the only real problem that i can directly contribute to this driver version compatibilty is that the kybd is sometimes not startable at boot up

so for a quick fix i disable the kybd and re-enable the kybd

i also found that when the explorer.exe hogs 50 % of the cpus, opening windows and using the start menu, etc. causes a stall

at this point i use taskmanager to end the stall and the cpu hogging stops as well; for some reason