My explorer.exe process is acting up...

In the last 2 days my explorer.exe process has been using 50% plus of the CPU even when my computer is doing nothing. I dunno what happened to my computer but I need some advice to calm this thing down. All I remember is the last thing I did before it went all crazy is that I did a full computer scan but I didn't find anything bad or erase anything so that shouldn't be the problem. Help is greatly appreciated!

 

. Your OS?
. Does the CPU usage go down if you start something else?
. Do you a restore point to use?

cheers ...

 

I'm using Vista Ultimate 64-bit. My usage does not go down when i start doing something else. In fact, it usually goes to 100% when I open any program such as AIM, Outlook, or firefox. I've been thinking about using a restore point but I wanna see if anyone can fix this before I do that.

 

Try scanning for viruses, that's what the problem usually is.
If that doesn't work then use a restore point.

 

I did a full system scan with AVG and got nothing. I also did a system restore and it worked but when I shutdown my computer and turned it back on today, explorer.exe still is hogcrazy for CPU usage Is there anything else I can do?

 

Could be a registry problem...

 

anyway I can get someone's help if it is a registry problem? I'd really appreciate the help.

 

Use Sysinternal's Process Monitor or Process Explorer to get a better idea of what's going on with explorer.exe and exactly where the CPU usage is coming from (this utility was written by Mark Russinovich, who is one of the authors of Windows Internals, which is one of the gold standards for understanding what's going on under the hood of a WinOS).

 

Explorer is a piece of crap, and randomly does things like that. You should be able to run a new task from the built-in Windows process monitor. Just kill explorer.exe and run a new copy of it. As for why, I don't think anyone really knows... explorer just gets itself all confused from time to time.

You're probably seeing 50% usage because you probably have a dual-core CPU, and explorer is basically infinitely looping on one core in one thread, and the other one is mostly idle.

 

I do have a dual-core CPU but it's definitely using both of my CPUs. One would be in the 70% and the other would be in the 40% or vice versa somewhere around that range. Could you tell me how exactly to run a new copy of explorer.exe? I don't consider myself that computer savvy when it comes to the registry and stuff like that.

 

Hmm... quite a worrying way to start of a post - and then a moderator...
(Possibly the Linux bit)
Anyway.

I do agree tha explorer.exe isn't perfect, howeverif it runs fine on say 90% of other computers, there is no reason for it not to do so on his.
And by the way I've got a dual core CPU and my explorer is fine.

 

This is the first time i've ever encountered anything like this on my laptop (HP dv5). I still don't know how to do what you told me but wouldn't me shutting down my computer and starting back up remove this problem like if I were to make another copy of explorer and run a new task. If so, shutting down and restarting does nothing to aid the problem cause it's still messed up. I have a T9400 CPU if that helps with anything.

 

It seems to me that you are no expert at computers, right?
(At least I'm not - maybe a well informed person, but way way off from more)

Anyway.

Previous suggestions include:
Download process monitor/explorer from the sysinternals suite - this program gives you detailed information on ny process.
Have you tried using this program?

Next sugestion:
Go into task manager - end the process "exlplorer.exe" and then go to "new task/process" (run command) and type in "explorer.exe" (without the "")

I'm just thinking:
Get CCleaner and run a registry scan - look at every value, and maybe you can tidy it up a bit in there... (leave stuff you don't recognize - the odd long strings of numbers are generally MS generated and can in mot cases be deleted safely - from the ones CCLeaner selected)

The T9400 processor - my SZ has a T9300 - no problem here, these two are similar, that's not the cause.

 

I'd consider myself okay computer-savvy but not when it comes to internal process/services/registry stuff.

I tried the process monitor thing that you guys advised me to use but I can't understand what was really going on so I tried doing a fresh start with a new explore.exe and it worked! I haven't shut my laptop today so we'll see if this fix is permanent (here's to hoping that it is!). I use ccleaner pretty often so my registry and probably as clean as it'll get.

I really, really appreciate the help you guys offered! Thanks for taking the time and aiding me. I'll give you guys a heads up tomorrow if this is a permanent fix or not.

 

Well restarting explorer.exe is not a permanent fix - you'd have to do it after every start.

But if it doesn't show up while the laptop is running then I suggest some internal conflict - say driver or service...

 

if something buggy is hooked into explorer that could cause it to go screwy on you like a buggy addon/extension,explorer acts up if something is causing it but i do try to limit what addons/extensions that are hooked into explorer to prevent problems,i know explorer is the way it is but cant do anything about it.

 

Yeah, so upon starting my laptop this morning explorer is still messed up so I ran another task. I have no idea what to do about this. It's really bothering me. I use samuarize for my desktop, could that be doing something about explorer? I don't see how cause it's worked fine for me the past month but explorer just recently started doing this. I would like to use that process monitor program that i was offered but I don't know what i'm suppose to be looking at. Could someone guide me so that I could take a screenshot so I can show you what's up?

 

Just activate tree view in one of the buttons on the top panel.

It'll look like this:


and this'll allow you to tell which processes are running under explorer.exe and how much "power" they are consuming

 

I used my laptop today and explorer turned out fine! Because of that, I couldn't get a pic of my explorer in it's frenzied state. Hopefully time healed it and I won't encounter this kind of problem again but i'll keep you updated. Thanks for the help! Again, I really appreciate the time and effort

 

When you get time to do so - process explorer.

Also: What did you do?

I'm thinking - have you tried leaving the laptop running overnight? That would be good so it could "sort itself out" defragmenting, indexing, arranging boot files

 

and



these two pictures are of my laptop on a good day. I don't see a problem but I could be wrong.

I haven't done anything to my laptop other than shutting down the explorer.exe process and re-running it when it goes bad. Once I do that, it's good the whole time my laptop is on. On a regular day, I start my laptop in the morning and shut it down at night when I go to bed. The only thing I did yesterday, other than re-running explorer, was did a quick clean up with ccleaner on all fronts - registry, temporary files, etc...
But i'm not complaining cause it's working now.

Do laptops really do that much while it's left alone at night? I thought all that stuff was manually configured if so, I could probably try that.

 

That looks actually better than mine

Good.
Now, do the same once explorer exe acts up again, i.e. don't restart it, then process explorer will tell you which sub porcess is causing the problem.

 

have you tried autoruns to see what is hooked into explorer?it sounds like something may be incompatible or buggy with explorer,also if you have to end it and restart it and it works fine after that then that points to something bad that is hooked into explorer and the restart of explorer fixes whatever is causing the problem,do you have the latest updates and sp1?

 

I have not done any autoruns to see if anything is hooked onto explorer namely because I don't know how to. Could you explain to me the process?

It started messing up again today so I haven't permanently gotten rid of this



I have all the latest updates and SP1 on my vista ultimate.

 

Ok - now what you see is that its directly the explorer that's acting up not one of the "subcomponents"...

Next step:
You want to get at the actual "stuff" running under explorer.exe

To do this, right click the process and chose "Properties" - then select the "Threads" tab - this'll allow you to find the responsible component.
See pic:



Then you can start Autoruns - it basically allows you to chose what loads at startup - chose the "explorer" tab and uncheck the component that causes your problems.



If you feel up to it (don't if you're unsure about what you are doing) you can also do some tweaking via autoruns.

 

Wow, thanks for the step-by-step tutorial! I'll be sure to do all that the next time I restart my computer. I'll keep you posted with my results. Hopefully this will be the end of it.

Oh and wouldn't disabling something in my explorer.exe cause some adverse effects to my computer? Or is it safe to uncheck some things and still be fully functional?

If this doesn't work, i'll try the tweaking via autoruns but with some help of yours haha

 

You're welcome.

Its generally safe to shut down quite a lot - the point is though, you don't want to loose functionality, so only shut down stuff you can trace/identify.

 

This is what the threads are showing me.

Problem now is that I cannot find it in autoruns. I don't know how to go looking for it. I've searched for a good 20 minutes but can't find it. One thing that I did do is that in process explorer while under the "threads" tab, I suspended the process that was going nuts and resumed it and things went back to normal. Weird. But the thing is that when I suspended that process, explorer was not functional. I couldn't use my taskbar and everything else down there so if I were to prevent that from loading that would mean it loses its functionality.

 

Ok, could you please post the .dll inlcuding the path? Its difficult to read on the pic (for whatever reasons...)

Now I think its SHLWAPI.dll yes?
This stands for:
Shell Light-weight Utility Library. (googled it)

In Autoruns it can be found under the KnownDLLs tab - but I think its not something you should deactivate.

But now we've got the problem traced, its a first step.

Edit: your path contains "boot" doesn't it? Mine doesn't...

 

Here is a better picture of the thread



I'll take a nothing screenshot if you can't read this one either. So now that we may have found what is causing the havoc what can we do about it knowing that it can't be suspended from starting up?

 

OK - I've been Googleing a bit - there was a problem concerning this file, here:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1247495&SiteID=17
basically it was linked to indexing - maybe try to leave your computer running overnight...

Maybe it helps - I'm a bit at a loss at the moment.

 

At this point I don't have a lot to add to the diagnosis, other than that what appears to be getting called so frequently is a particular function that is encoded in SHLWAPI.dll that is used to verify whether or not a particular path is a directory root. That would be the numerous calls to "SHLWAPI.dll!PathIsRootW+0xcc".

The MSDN reference on this function is not particularly enlightening, other than to explain what it is. I would guess, based on the reference, that the hex number 0xcc is a pointer to a null-terminated string that contains the path that the calling app wants to verify is, or is not, a directory root path.

My first stab at a guess as to what's causing it, given that it's explorer.exe that's having the problem, is that there is something that explorer.exe is constantly trying to check to see if it's a directory root, and it's making so many calls to SHLWAPI that it's eventually hanging itself.

Is it possible that you have any shortcuts on your desktop, or files saved on your desktop that might have gotten corrupted?

 

I have a minimal amount of icons on my desktop and that all work just fine. I do use Rocketdock for some shortcuts too but they all work fine as well. Ugh....this is so much of a nuisance I'll try and re-shortcut everything on my desktop and see if that fixes anything.

I'm back at college now so it might take me awhile to respond. I really am humble for the help guys! I just wish we could solve this already.

And when you say to leave it on for a night should I leave it on while the explorer is crazy or when it's doing fine?

 

The shortcuts on the desktop can all work fine but there could still be a problem if explorer is constantly checking to see what the path of those shortcuts is using the shlwapi.dll function.

 

If you leave it overnight then obviously under load - I'm thinking that its trying to do something - leaving it overnight may solve it if it does what it wants.

If it loops it won't solve the problem though...

 

Reading through this thread, I have the exact issue. Explorer constantly use CPU 50%. using Process Explorer, it showed that SHLWAPI.dll!PathIsRootW+0xcc cause this cpu usage.

btw, I have window vista 64bit (clean install and no app installed yet). I remember that when I first got my HP dv5t 3 weeks ago, it too constantly use 50%cpu even at idle, out of the box.

I am not sure if OP fixed his issue. can anyone help?

thanks

 

This has fixed the problem for a lot of people:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com.../thread/9a109892-a473-4f5b-a2fe-f3c3b34deed8/

 

I tried that solution but did not fix it.

 

I got it fix. the solution is posted here