explorer *process* is bunged :(

will my installation survive

Published on October 27, 2006 By werewolf In Personal Computing

Hi all,

My computer has been freezing lately, probably some connection on the motherboard. I think I fixed that part of it, but...

During one session, it froze a number of times very quickly. During reboots, during ad-aware and virus checking sessions, etc.

It seems that now anything in the explorer *process* is verrrrrryyyyyy slow. Sys tray refreshes are slow, taskbar refreshes are slow, opening the start panel, opening windows explorer.exe (it loads quickly, but navigation is painful).

All ad-aware, spy-bot, virus scans are negative and I've used CCleaner.

Applications seem to be running well, but if I use an open/save dialog box and try navigating somewhere, it slows down. Very slow. Go make a sandwich and a cup of coffee slow.

I tried to set a restore point to a date prior to this all happening, but it didn't help. Same problems.

I REALLY don't want to have to re-install the OS, but what other options are there? Is there a way to "re-tune" the explorer process?

Is there anything I can check in the registry, are there any proggies which can do this? Does the system recovery option in the disk handle this?

**update** I just updated FastOne viewer and winamp and the installations were flawless. However, when winamp fired up, I can't do anything with it. Clicking the playlist button did nothing, media library same thing. Can't even move it around the desk top. Have no idea if this has anything to do with my problem or if winamps messed up.

Hope this isn't too much information

I dl'd something using Firefox and when it was done I clicked "open folder". Explorer came right up (I performed those updates mentioned above) and while I had explorer going, I clicked the 'up' button and explorer moved up one folder level. I did this all the way up that one drive. When I clicked 'up' again it went to 'My Computer' and did it's crawling through molasses thing again.

Also, if I right click on something and my mouse hovers over the 'send to' item, I have to wait a couple of minutes before anything happens.
**end update**

Do any of you gurus have any suggestions? I really need to fix this asap.

I thank you so much in advance

David

Comments (Page 1)

Corky_O

on Oct 27, 2006

The first thing I do to rule out any problematic XP basic funtionality is to perform a clean boot.

You can read the knowledge base info here: WWW Link

Note - make sure to pay particular attention to the text in 'Step 5' concerning the "Load System Services" option. Disabling this one will clear all system restore points, so do not clear this one unless you have decided to do away with the system restore options for a fix.

Running XP on a clean boot (while admittedly not a visual masterpiece due to the vanilla vga drivers running) will allow you to determine whether the explorer process is being slow at the base level.

werewolf

on Oct 27, 2006

ok i'll try it

funny thing... I thought that since I thought it was explorer messing up, I'll just go into litestep. Came up great. As soon as i tried to access 'my computer'....phhhtt

Thanks and i'll get back to you. (it is booting up abnormally slow at the moment.

dragonmage

on Oct 27, 2006

If you have a floppy drive try disconnecting it. I have seen instances where anytime you access the My Computer folder or open/save dialogs Windows will try to read the floppy even if there is no disk. This caused a stall until it finally decided nothing was there.

Also do you leave discs in your optical drives?

werewolf

on Oct 27, 2006

still working on it corky.

dragonmage: not normally, no. I have my xp install disk in there, just in case something needs to be fixed. This is not that kind of a slow down. This is a really bad, bad thing

CerebroJD

on Oct 27, 2006

Have you booted into Safe Mode at any point in time, to see if things are still slow in that?

werewolf

on Oct 27, 2006

OMG...that was a bi***.

I was able to 'clean boot' but the problems remain.

cerebro, I will try that now.

werewolf

on Oct 27, 2006

currently in safe mode...no problems at all with explorer. so, what does that mean? there's a driver problem? I looked in device manager and all looked good.

werewolf

on Oct 27, 2006

while cleaning up I found that using the 'urge' music store, wmp cached what looks like a thumbnail of every album in their database onto my c: drive

werewolf

on Oct 27, 2006

going to reinstall video drivers just for the heck of it

yrag

on Oct 27, 2006

Something is running in the background. Look in Task Manager for anything running that shouldn't be (while you're in Task Manager, see how much physical memory you're using). No luck there, turn off your security apps one at a time until your system returns to normal.

werewolf

on Oct 27, 2006

yrag...everything looks perfectly normal, as far as normal can be in that mess. Obviously the svchost entries could be hiding anything, but there is no abnormal cpu usage, no extra memory hogs, no extra handles or gdi objects. everything looks normal. I checked taskmanager while the problem was happening, during the event, and still there was nothing odd going on.

The only extra thing I've got running is my firewall, because without it, nothing gets out. Unless I should turn off the true vector service. no anti virus or anything like that.

TYCUS

on Oct 27, 2006

werewolf, during the safe mode, try to make a deep virus and spyware scan., but just remember that some virus and spyware scanners dont scan during safe mode.., dont know why...

...btw, u can also try "Registry Mechanic" to found out if there is a bug in your registry.

Registry Mechanic

werewolf

on Oct 27, 2006

tycus: ok i'll give it a shot while I'm here. just dl'd the vid drivers and reg mech. lets see what happens

yrag

on Oct 27, 2006

Stop installing stuff or we'll never find it ......

true vector service

What version?

TYCUS

on Oct 27, 2006

Stop installing stuff or we'll never find it ......

dont worry about installing Reg Mechanic.., this progry doesn't make any thing in the background., well., it wont do any thing unless u ask for it.., it wont load at start up, it wont do any scan unless you ask for it.., it is a passive progry...

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