I've been having a problem recently that the Explorer process it taking up 80%+ of my CPU. I only have a temporary solution which is open Task Manager, end Explorer, Run Explorer. It usually flys from 1-80%, but then stays on 100% once I open up something like My Documents.
I did a system rollback, but this made the system worse, making my virus scanner crash. I fixed that by updating it. I've run a scan, but it showed up nothing.
I've given serious thought to backing up my stuff/reformatting. But it'd be easier if there was just a solution.
Backing everything up for formatting. Kinda sad. It's really hard, because I open a window to copy something from, BOOM! 99% CPU.
Funny story, my old external hardrive wasn't showing up in my computer, even though it says it was installed correctly. Dished out $200 for a new 250gb one, and I found out I had to create a partition. Lol.
Control panel>Administrative tools>Computer management>Disk management. Create partiton.
Since you are already reformatting, might as well try a registry fix. If it helps, good. If not then its OK.
This will fix it:
The obnoxious bug in XP that causes Explorer to read the entire contents of broken AVI files before allowing any access to them is caused by bad behavior of shmedia.dll.
This problem manifests itself by causing Explorer to read the entire contents of an AVI file, regarless of its size or location any time the mouse pointer is hovered over it, or an attempt is made to access it in windows explorer. This causes 'permission denied' errors when trying to simply move, copy or delete these files as they cannot be changed while Explorer has an open handle on them.
This also causes a DoS situation where large AVI's are stored on remote shares and Explorer keeps reading the files from beginning to end each time they are accessed.
To correct this misbehavior in Windows XP, remove the following registry key.
This will prevent Explorer from loading shmedia.dll in response to file property queries on these files. This will not effect your ability to play files, get file attributes, or even view thumbnails. Say goodbye to all explorer.exe 100% CPU issues.
And Solution #2 (basically does the same thing, except you are inactivating the file attributes option)...But it WORKS--No more locked .avi files:
Well windows seem to have a REALLY big problem when it comes to reading AVI files. It seems that when you click on an AVI file in explorer, it'll try to read the entire AVI file to determine the width,height, etc. of the AVI file (this is displayed in the Properties window). Now the problem with Windows is that if you have a broken/not fully downloaded AVI file that doesnt contain this info, Windows will scan the entire AVI file trying to figure out all these properties which in the process will probably cause 100% CPU usage and heavy memory usage.
To solve this problem all you have to do is the following:
1. Open up regedit
2. Goto HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAs
sociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler
3. Delete the "Default" value which should be "{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}"
Please note that this will no longer provide you with the windows properties displaying the AVI file information such as width, height, bitrate etc. But its a small price to pay for saving you resources.
Originally posted by core2kid: Since you are already reformatting, might as well try a registry fix. If it helps, good. If not then its OK.
This will fix it:
The obnoxious bug in XP that causes Explorer to read the entire contents of broken AVI files before allowing any access to them is caused by bad behavior of shmedia.dll.
This problem manifests itself by causing Explorer to read the entire contents of an AVI file, regarless of its size or location any time the mouse pointer is hovered over it, or an attempt is made to access it in windows explorer. This causes 'permission denied' errors when trying to simply move, copy or delete these files as they cannot be changed while Explorer has an open handle on them.
This also causes a DoS situation where large AVI's are stored on remote shares and Explorer keeps reading the files from beginning to end each time they are accessed.
To correct this misbehavior in Windows XP, remove the following registry key.
This will prevent Explorer from loading shmedia.dll in response to file property queries on these files. This will not effect your ability to play files, get file attributes, or even view thumbnails. Say goodbye to all explorer.exe 100% CPU issues.
And Solution #2 (basically does the same thing, except you are inactivating the file attributes option)...But it WORKS--No more locked .avi files:
Well windows seem to have a REALLY big problem when it comes to reading AVI files. It seems that when you click on an AVI file in explorer, it'll try to read the entire AVI file to determine the width,height, etc. of the AVI file (this is displayed in the Properties window). Now the problem with Windows is that if you have a broken/not fully downloaded AVI file that doesnt contain this info, Windows will scan the entire AVI file trying to figure out all these properties which in the process will probably cause 100% CPU usage and heavy memory usage.
To solve this problem all you have to do is the following:
1. Open up regedit
2. Goto HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAs
sociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler
3. Delete the "Default" value which should be "{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}"
Please note that this will no longer provide you with the windows properties displaying the AVI file information such as width, height, bitrate etc. But its a small price to pay for saving you resources.
