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Bizarre file explorer in Vista
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molotov View Drop Down
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Posts: 17492 		Post Options Post Options   Quote molotov Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Bizarre file explorer in Vista
    Posted: 04 November 2009 at 4:18am
Good to hear you were able to get to the bottom of it, Hugo!
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hugo View Drop Down
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Posts: 29 		Post Options Post Options   Quote hugo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 November 2009 at 1:55pm
Originally posted by molotov

Hi Hugo,

In terms of trying to determine what may be going on, I'd suggest using Process Monitor and Process Explorer.  You indicate high CPU usage; have you identified that the process responsible for the CPU usage is explorer.exe?  (It is implied, but not stated. Embarrassed )  You also indicated you have indexing disabled on the drives; have you verified that the Windows Search service is not active? Perhaps, set it to a Disabled start-type.

Do the files in the affected folders show up immediately?  Does the behavior happen regardless of the View setting for the folder?

Did you recently install software (e.g. Explorer shell extension) that may be responsible for the behavior?  Any chance AV software may be involved?
 
Thanks, you raised some helpful suggestion and it got me thinking.
 
Yes it was explorer.exe, this was established some months ago, but there was no real idea what has going on inside it.
 
I checked all installed stuff and nothing really looked suspect, I did uninstall a few semi-recent little utils, rebooted but problem remained.
 
However, after playing around and seeing how/if this affetcs other drives (the box has three identical 500GB disks) I began to focus more and more on WinZip.
 
After some fiddling and experimentation I found the cause.
 
I sometimes back up by zipping a folder in which all dev work resides, this is something that is done sometimes as a sort of "full" backup.
 
After the folder is zipped, the zip file is copied to other remote systems and archived.
 
Well the zips have also been accumulating in the root drive C:, there were approx 70 of these, and they are as big as 1.5 GB sometimes.
 
So I simply moved to these to a new folder called (unsurprisingly) "Backups" and the issue has gone.
 
It seems that if one explores a folder that contains a lot of large zip files, then the explorer gets busy as hell.
 
Because all these were in the root folder, this was always expaned as I explored any part of the disk, but now it is only expanded if I actually explore this "Backups" folder.
 
I have no idea what winzip is making explorer do, but at least its stopped now!
 
Thx
 
Morantex Inc.
http://www.morantex.com
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molotov View Drop Down
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Posts: 17492 		Post Options Post Options   Quote molotov Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 November 2009 at 11:28am
Hi Hugo,

In terms of trying to determine what may be going on, I'd suggest using Process Monitor and Process Explorer.  You indicate high CPU usage; have you identified that the process responsible for the CPU usage is explorer.exe?  (It is implied, but not stated. Embarrassed )  You also indicated you have indexing disabled on the drives; have you verified that the Windows Search service is not active? Perhaps, set it to a Disabled start-type.

Do the files in the affected folders show up immediately?  Does the behavior happen regardless of the View setting for the folder?

Did you recently install software (e.g. Explorer shell extension) that may be responsible for the behavior?  Any chance AV software may be involved?
Daily affirmation:
net helpmsg 4006
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hugo View Drop Down
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Posts: 29 		Post Options Post Options   Quote hugo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03 November 2009 at 9:39am
I run and work on Vista Ultimate x64.
 
For some time I have noticed that if I open an instance of file explorer that is browsing some folder on drive C:, then the machine soon begins to get busy, I can hear the fan speed up and the CPU ramps up to like 60% or more, this is a dual core box too.
 
This annoys me and I usually close the explorer once I am done, but this is a drag.
 
I've found no mention of any issues anywhere on the web, that explain this.
 
However...
 
A few days ago, I noticed that some of the folders in the folder hierarch that I am vieiwing, have a small magnifying glass symbol on them AND that symbol is moving in a tiny circular path, it appears on all parent folders to the folder being viewed.
 
This suggest that the explorer is "doing something" and this is the cause of the heavy CPU Usage.
 
But what does the symbol mean? I am not searching for anything, nor do I have indexing enabled on any drive either.
 
 
Here is a image snapshot of part of the file explorer's TreeView when this is happening. It happens all the time and is becoming a serious frustration, especially when testing and doing work as the box just gets soooo busy.
 
So what the heck is explorer doing? I never saw or see this on XP, 2000 or any other version of Windows.
 
Also is this symbol documented anywhere???
 
Any help much appreciated.
 
H
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