Explorer.exe using 50% CPU and 100mb ram

I have a little problem here. I reinstalled windows XP Prof NL SP1 yesterday, did some minor updates (just security, no sp2 or anything), installed my basic programs and some games.

Now EVERYTIME i copy several files (ie. a few Mp3s from one folder to another) explorer.exe keeps using 50% CPU and 100+, sometimes even 250 MB. If i kill the process explorer.exe and reopen it, its okay untill the next time i copy something...how is this possible? I tried the search function here and google but couldnt find anything that really looks like this.

Any help appreciated

- tim

I once had a problem like this happen with my brothers PC. I reformatted the HD and did a fresh install of XP PRO and it worked fine. It wasn't using 50% of the CPU after that. Try it maybe it will work for you.

could be a virus.

dicecca112 said:

could be a virus.

Click to expand...

Nah, sounds like somone downloaded some spyware ridden pr0n. I'd start checking for spyware If eyez were j00.

Could be. When it happened to my brothers PC, i hadn't connected to the Internet yet.

The XP install is fresh, and i scanned thrice with ad aware and anti virus already,...


I had it happen too, last time i did a format. It went away after awhile, or at least i cant remember how it got fixed.

After a tip i found on another forum, i changed a value in regedit, and it seems gone


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}" to "0"
4. Reboot

Ah, evil .avi (and other media files) preview again. That stuff is crap of the first order

klingens said:

Ah, evil .avi (and other media files) preview again. That stuff is crap of the first order

Click to expand...

yeahm it was explained as some .avi stuff. I wonder what the cause is, really, i mean, with 50% of 3.5Ghz it has to be doing something