explorer.exe Hangs Frequently

[iuseccleaner]

I'm not sure why but once in a while my explorer will hang for no apparent reason(static hour glass appears). It can be caused by a simple right-click on a file, dragging a file, opening a folder, etc. I can wait forever and nothing seems to change. When this happens it is still possible to open Task Manager and the weird thing is explorer.exe's CPU usage is 0%! I googled and the common symptom is that explorer.exe's CPU usage will be really high but this doesn't seem to apply to my case. Everytime this happens I resort to killing the explorer.exe process and then restart it.

 

I tried disabling AVG Free's resident shield to see if it is the culprit but the problem seems to always appear again.

 

My spec:

 

Windows XP Home Edition SP2

Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz HT

2.5 GB RAM

AVG Free 9.0

Spybot Search & Destroy(Tea Timer is activated)

 

Anybody with a similar problem or solution? Thank you.

[Andavari]

The first thing to do is try these instructions as it could be malware related:

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=20120

[iuseccleaner]

The first thing to do is try these instructions as it could be malware related:

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=20120

 

What does 'The Comedian' and 'TFC' do or fix?

[hazelnut]

These are steps that should be followed to make sure you have no hidden 'nasties'

 

We are lucky enough to have Rorschach112 as one of our spyware mods as he also is a malware fighter trainer

 

I can assure you these programs are genuine and are used on several well known spyware fighting forums.

 

Should you have any problems running these programs or following the steps just let us know.

[iuseccleaner]

These are steps that should be followed to make sure you have no hidden 'nasties'

 

We are lucky enough to have Rorschach112 as one of our spyware mods as he also is a malware fighter trainer

 

I can assure you these programs are genuine and are used on several well known spyware fighting forums.

 

Should you have any problems running these programs or following the steps just let us know.

 

Thanks hazel for the reply. I'm sure those are good security utilities but my concern was what changes would it make to my computer so that just in case something goes wrong, I would know how to revert the effects. Tools like ComboFix can be sometimes hurt the system if used incorrectly, so I hope you understand. Thank you.

[hazelnut]

Yes that is why it is a good idea to use them under the guidance of a spyware mod.

 

Also post in the Spyware Hell part of the forum about this, Rorschach112 will look after you

[marmite]

And while you're looking at the spyware angle, here's another possibility .....

 

An extremely common cause for this is a poorly written explorer shell extension. Trouble is they are a b*gger to find. Can you tie the start of this happening down to the installation of any software that added anything to your explorer right-click menu?

 

I've had this periodically on one machine for ages ... I still haven't been able to pin it down yet!

[Talldog9]

If all else fails you can keep Process Monitor running in the background and wait for a hang.

[iuseccleaner]

And while you're looking at the spyware angle, here's another possibility .....

 

An extremely common cause for this is a poorly written explorer shell extension. Trouble is they are a b*gger to find. Can you tie the start of this happening down to the installation of any software that added anything to your explorer right-click menu?

 

I've had this periodically on one machine for ages ... I still haven't been able to pin it down yet!

 

I can't seem to link with any software but thanks for the tip. I'll take a look at the shell extensions, sounds more like it.

 

 

If all else fails you can keep Process Monitor running in the background and wait for a hang.

 

It happens quite often so I should be able to get it to hang quite easily... hopefully procxp can shed more light