I seem to have a problem running Windows XP professional. Everytime I acces the folder on my hard drive that contains my .mp3's (several gigabytes), my computer lags extremely slow. I open up task manager to find that explorer.exe is using 99% of my CPU, therefor slowing the whole thing down. If I restart, the computer is fine until I access the MP3's folder again. Have no idea what to do about this. I know other people have had this problem, but I have yet to uncover a successful fix, though I have tried a few. Can anyone help?

got exactly the same problem.. Did you solve the problem amd if so how did you do it ? Greetings Martin

Solved my problem...... I downloaded a movie with the program Kazaa/Grokster. Only got it partial and i renamed the .dat file to .avi so i could watch a part of the movie. (wanted to check if it was te right one) Now it seems that if you do so it will chrash your computer (CPU is getting very bussy ) You also cannot delete that file anymore. "file is in use by an other program or person" I removed all the completed (and good) .avi and .mp3 files to another map, uninstalled the Kazaa program, after witch i coud delete the renamed file. I reinstalled the program, put all the files back in de downloadmap and TADAA problem solved. Greetings Martin

I have this problem a lot. Yes - I rename files once in a while. It might very well be the problem. It´s crazy though. Why does a simple rename make explorer eat cpu ? Whenever this happens (several times a day), i hit ctr-alt-del which pops up the task manager. I look for explorer.exe amonng the processe and kill it. Then under the application tab I hit the New Task button and type in explorer. When the new explorer starts the machine is ok again, that is until it happens again. I´m running Windows XP. I guess it has to do with windows trying to be intelligent about the content of the files. A half .avi file for example is not runnable as the index is in the end. If any one has a solution for this it would be sooo nice. I´m really fed up with it. -- Staffan

Me again... Did some more surfing. Here´s a suggestion I just found on tweakxp.com. I hope it´s ok to paste it in here. The url is: http://www.tweakxp.com/tweakxp/performance_tweaks.asp Clicking AVI Files on explorer casuing 100% CPU Usage Views: 27944 | Print Tweak | 2/28/2002 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\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler 3. Delete the "Default" value which should be "{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}" Voila! Please not 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. NOTE: Please use caution when using regedit. Improper usage may cause windows to behave imcorrectly. Also, I cannot be held resposible. Backup your registry first. Tweak written by or based on information submitted by Mehran Ahmad Copyright © 2001-2002 TweakXP.com

Thanks a lot for the help.. I've been having this problem recently and I couldnt figure out what was causing explorer.exe to be using up the cpu time.. I did the same thing as mentioned above with renaming the .dat extension to a .avi to view an unfinished kazaa download.

Seem to have found an official MS reaction: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+%22windows+xp%22+%22cpu+time%22+explorer.exe&hl=en&selm=u5Uz7xb3BHA.1288%40tkmsftngp07&rnum=1 sais: Start/Run/Regedit and delete the "DEFAULT" key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler\ and refers to: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q255/7/58.asp Good hunting