explorer.exe taking up 20% CPU


Recommended Posts

Is anyone else having this problem? Explorer.exe takes up, on average, 20% CPU usage.. This makes all my games skip every few seconds, and other programs run crappy as well..

I know it's explorer, because if I end task on it, and run a game without explorer running, the games don't skip, and I get, on average, 20fps more then usual.

I've got Windows XP Professional.. An Athlon 1.1GHz, running at 1.3GHz, 384MB of PC133 RAM, an Abit KT7E motherboard, and a PNY GeForce 4 ti4400..

Any advice would be appreciated..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rumour says that mainly AMD chips resource are used for gaming purpose rather than basic Windows operation.

Get an Intel, I know it's slower than AMD, expensiver as well, but it is worth it because you get all the reliable that Intel CPU offered.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not my processor.. I've got a Pentium 4 system that has the same exact problem..

Under Windows 2000, or any other Windows OS, this doesn't happen. It's unique to Windows XP.

ToastGodSupreme: I kill explorer completely. It doesn't reinitialize until I run it myself, using the task manager..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hrm, usually when you end explorer, you lose the ability to navigate your desktop and similar explorer-related areas. Though this is true to 2k and 9x, I don't know if XP is the same. If so though, you may have yourself some sort of larger problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

this should be a farely easy fix , turn off visual styles from the system properties applet in the control panel and turn off a lot of the effects windows uses and watch explorer.exe and this should get rid of a lot of the excess cpu usage

Link to comment
Share on other sites

no it can't be visual styles.

i have turned on and 0% cpu usage on explorer

maybe a dll, a context menu dll or a antivirus dll.

apps like winzip,winace etc install sometimes dll's in explorer, and if one of this is using much cpu time then....

cya

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a Via chipset, yes..

And it's not any third party drivers/addons/etc.. I recently formatted, and the first things I installed were drivers, and Ballistics, one of the games that is really affected by this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ok , the via 4-1 drivers can create more problems than they cure , do not install them if xp detects all of your hardware fine , secondly , there is a driver on http://www.networking.tzo.com/net/software/ called the PCI Latency Patch. Download it , install it , give it a try. It boosted my system performance by at least an all around 30 percent, at least. But I still say it is XP Visual Styles.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not because of visual styles or VIA 4in1. I have both of them on and it's fine over here. As I am typing this, my explorer is only using 1.37%~1.5%. And not sure if matters, but couple IE windows opened, and multiple apps runnging at the same time. (Some are just sitting in the systray tho..)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.