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I have noticed that for some inexplicable reason my computer will slow down quite dramatically at certain times for an hour or so. When I pull up Task Manager, I see that explorer.exe is showing at between 20000 and 30000 KB, and I can hear my computer whirring.
After a while it returns to normal and shows between 4000 and 10000 KB.

I have looked carefully and checked for information on Google. I do not think I have some kind of a virus. I also have Windows SP2, which allegedly corrects this problem.
The file path is C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.Exe, and I gather that is exactly where it is supposed to be.

But, could somebody explain (in lay person's terms ) why explorer.exe sometimes spikes in usage like that?

EDIT

Hmmm... I wonder if a recent Windows security update is the problem???
There is some suggestion of that [url="http://help.lockergnome.com/windows/Experts-explorer-exe-problems-ftopict448479.html"]here[/url]

explorer.exe currently takes up about 30,000KB on my computer. It is the shell on which you do everything, so when there are a few windows open, explorer.exe becomes more demanding as well.

http://www.liutilities.com/products/win ... /explorer/

Thing is.... sometimes I do not have any windows open, and I will have closed down all (to the best of my knowledge) non essential processes, and it will still burn 20 - 30 thousand KB...

I have run a virus scan, Stinger and various spyware applications, and they have all come up empty, so I'm baffled.

Do you have windows indexing your harddrive for faster seach results when the computer is idle? Or possible other services which run (mostly) while the computer is ideling.


Could be something along that line, windows has a number of ressource heavy tasks which it tries (emphasisme on tries) to do when the computer is idle, for instance the indexing.
I'd advice you to try the process explorer from sysinternal http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/P ... lorer.html (other proberly exists which does the same, but I like this one and use it extensive for work and so does practically anybody at work now that I've introduced it) instead of the taskmanager, because this one would allow you to see which other processes are run under explorer.exe (or another other process) and which files/.dlls and so on are being run by it.
This way you might be able to indentify what is being run by your explorer when you see it spiking.

Thanks Xandax, I will definitely download that when my virus scan is completed. It looks *much* better than something similar I tried yesterday.

I think I may have identified the source of my problem... My AV requires that I re-register every year, and I forgot to do that..
*cough* needless to say I woke up and saw that the scan I initiated last night had found a virus. (good thing I'm careful about email and what I download, otherwise it could have been worse) I have quarantined it, and will grab the program once my scan has done its thing.

EDIT
ok, scrap that. The "virus" I found was Win32:CTX, which is apparently a false positive I got when I ran a Panda scan at their webiste, and that was only yesterday.
*goes to download sysinternal*

[QUOTE=dragon wench]Thing is.... sometimes I do not have any windows open, and I will have closed down all (to the best of my knowledge) non essential processes, and it will still burn 20 - 30 thousand KB...

I have run a virus scan, Stinger and various spyware applications, and they have all come up empty, so I'm baffled.[/QUOTE]
30MB is, IMO, quite normal for explorer.exe.

[QUOTE=Rookierookie]30MB is, IMO, quite normal for explorer.exe.[/QUOTE]

Okay, I was just struck because I have really noticed this happening recently, even if I have nothing open or running (optional processes that I can control).

Maybe it is an indexing issue as Xandax suggests... though I'm not exactly tech savvy with things like this, so reading any results/graphs etc. is a bit challenging.

It is relative fast to find out if it is Windows indexing service running, by right clicking your harddrive and choosing properties.
There should be 2 checkboxes at the bottom of the page, and I recommend neither being checked .

As for the process explorer I linked, it should show you in rather human text which processes run "under" the explorer.exe process in the default view.

As for "normal size" I dont' really know, never looked much - but mine seems to run around 20MB or so mostly.

Thanks Xandax,
I just found it