Re: Explorer taking up 100% of CPU in XP Home

From: Andy (andyorka_at_telus.net)
Date: 06/16/04 

Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 18:48:13 GMT

Burt,

Two thoughts. One, Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Restore might
get you back to a satisfactorily working status, or it might not. The System
Restore will at times declare that you cannot restore to the chosen
checkpoint. When this is the case I fall back on my most recent working
backup. I have a 160 GB HD for just such backups. Currently it holds three
generations of backups. I back up the entire C drive every other day using
Norton Ghost (part of Norton SystemWorks). I don't know what I would do
without such backups.

Hope this helps.

Andy

"Burt Johnson" <burt@mindstorm-inc.com> wrote in message
news:1ge8noh.153uyhl1mrbrk0N%burt@mindstorm-inc.com...
> I've seen a few messages on this topic, but only the tail of the threads
> are still on the server, and they did not have enough information to
> tell me how to fix this -- only that I am not alone with the problem.
>
> I am running XP Home on a 1-year old generic PC. Everything was working
> well until yesterday. I had a monitor suddenly die in the middle of an
> Outlook Express session. Having no view of how to reach the proper
> shutdown dialog, I powered down via front panel power button.
>
> After fixing the monitor (turned out the power supply had died), I
> powered back up. Now I get "CPU Usage: 100%" in the task manager, which
> shows that 99% is going to explorer.exe.
>
> The system works, but so slowly that it is nearly impossible to do
> anything. I am typing this on another machine (actually a Mac connected
> via KVM to the same peripherals).
>
> I tried rebooting several times, with no change in result. I tried
> leaving it alone for 6 hours, with no change in behavior. I tried
> removing the network connection prior to reboot, with no change.
>
> I tried deleting 'explorer.exe.' That did work to give me control of
> the CPU, but with no desktop, I wasn't sure what to do next, so that
> wasn't really much help (other than verifying that it is the explorer
> that seems hung up in a loop or some such).
>
> I have ZoneAlarm Pro for a firewall, plus have QuickKeys running. I had
> SETI@Home running too, but I deleted that (while in safe mode) to see if
> it was an issue -- no change.
>
> Ideas? What is causing this, and how do I go about fixing it?
>
> I have a retrospect backup that is only a few days old. Nothing major
> would be lost if reverting to it were done, but I don't even know how to
> do that if the machine is hung up like this.
>
> --
> - Burt Johnson
> MindStorm, Inc.
> http://www.mindstorm-inc.com/software.html