Explorer.exe

[allgonepetetong]

Hi Guys

From time to time my PC slows right down. When I go to the task manager and look at the performance the CPU is at 99-100%. The process that seems to be using it all up is called explorer.exe.

What is this and how do I stop it?

thanks all

Pete

[Trooper2]

If it is the real explorer.exe you don't want to stop it, here is some information from Microsoft regarding known issues with explorer.exe:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/31775

There are how ever some trojans/spyware that call themselves explorer.exe.

Use "Search" to locate all files called explorer.exe on your hard drive and if explorer.exe is found in anything but the "C:/Windows" folder you will want to investigate further and scan for spyware.

[SS HSV]

Explorer.exe is Windows. It is the shell of the program. You don't want to stop it or your will have no windows.

If you open the task manager (right click on the taskbar at the bottom then select Task Manager) then Processes, then right click on explorer.exe, and select End Process - now everything will dissapear from your desktop as you have effectively stopped Windows from running! To start it again, get the Task Manager up and from the Applications Tab, select New Task at the bottom, and type explorer.exe to get things back to normal. Now look again and see if your are still running full tilt?

I would run some anti-spywhere programs like Adaware first, and uninstall any programs which you do not use. If this problem has only started to happen recently, then perform a system restore.

It can be any number or reasons why explorer is using 100% resources, it could also be new hardware or existing harware with driver issues. It's normally down to software corruption of some kind.

[scorp]

Explorer loads a ton of "shell extensions" which are often responsible for slowing it down, I'd recommend a program call "AutoRuns" from sysinternals which will show you which shell extensions are loaded into explorer, from there you can disable unwanted ones.