Delayed Response To Taskbar Actions - Explorer.exe Related?
Oct 8, 2008
Am running XP SP2 and have had this problem for years - I think I even experienced it on my previous computer, but I'm not certain about that. Essentially, anything controlled by explorer.exe seems to experience frequent delays when I try to do simple actions. For example, clicking the Start button or the >> button to show more Quick Launch items will often take 5 to 10 seconds. Here's some detail: I click either of those buttons, and am shown the "pressed/darkened" version of them as normal. There is then a 5-10 second delay during which the button remains in the pressed/darkened state. During this time, anything related to explorer.exe does not respond - I can't click anything on the taskbar, go to the desktop, etc. I can, however still switch windows with Alt+Tab and work within the applications fine.
When the menu decides to finally show itself, it appears smoothly and as normal. Anything explorer.ext related I clicked on or tried to do during the delay is now executed (e.g. switching windows, going to the desktop). For a while (no idea on the duration, I don't use the taskbar much) following this, the taskbar will behave and respond to clicks rapidly. This problem always seems to occur after booting up - I try to launch my first application, and explorer hangs for a while... then eventually decides to respond again and let the application launch. Occurs regardless of if I wait for all harddrive activity to finish after boot. It almost feels as if explorer is being paged out into virtual memory, but that's just silly and shouldn't be necessary with 2gigs of RAM and not using anything particularly RAM hungry... There also doesn't seem to be any significant harddrive activity during the delays.
I've run a number of anti-virus programs including Kaspersky, Avira and Avast. I've used Spyware Terminator, Super Anti-Spyware and Ad-Ware. Numerous runs of these programs has not solved the problem. I have not added any new hardware or other programs (besides the spyware and anti-virus). I've tried disabling the resident antivirus program, Avast but that doesn't seem to improve the situation. I am Any ideas about how to proceed from here?
I badly need your support. Day before yesterday (01-Aug-06) night I upgraded the yahoo toolbar and used their norton anti spy to scan. Then I shut down the system and started to work the next day. Every thing is perfectly ok except for one thing. In Windows Explorer, on any folder or drive if I double click or open I get a crash. If I do explore then there is no problem.
I have a Dell 8200 desktop running XP service Pack 2. The problem I have is right clicking anything that is related to explorer.exe. I can right click icons on my desk top that are webpages, but not links to files on my computer. If I open a window, I cannot right click. I highlight an item and the busy hourglass spins around, then the window disappears. Can not delete items with out doing some work arounds. To delete, move or copy a file, I have to go into any program and say open file, then I can do what ever I want with it.
I have defragged, scanned for virus as well as adware and I am clean. Have even replaced the explorer.exe file. Had another tech try his darndest as well as other on-line Tech's. I have run a program called ShellExView and it comes up with an error in the following Extension Names. Channel, Channel Menu Handler Object, and Channel Shortcut. All are Channel Definition Viewer files.( cdfview.dll) All appear to be system types. Other Channel Definition Viewer fields seem to work just fine. (they include things such as icon handler, thumbnail, info tip handler etc. Not sure what to do with the information. I plan on getting a new computer soon, so do not want to have to reinstall Windows XP before then.
My pc won't boot windows. When I turn it on it gives the following message:"X300 SE 128MB BIOS P/N 113-A33406-100"Not exactly sure what is going on. I think it is either memory related or bios related, but I could be wrong.
I was recently in "folder options" and then "file types", just going through and changing icons for disk drives and folders, JPG's and whatnot. Anyway, after doing that, I noticed that if I try to double-click on a disk drive it'll go to Search. And if I double-click on a folder it'll go to Clear Read Only Attributes. I've obviously changed the default action associated with a double-click on folders and disk drives, and I know how to change the default actions undertaken by disc drives and folders and everything else when double-clicked. The thing is, when I go into folder options, file types, advanced (after selecting say, disk drive) the option to change the default action to "open" isn't there, for either folders or disk drives. Other options such as Find are present, but nothing else
I need a program to block certain actions on limited user accounts. I am the administrator on my computer, however my mom and sister use the computer as well. They have limited user accounts. My sister and my mom have accidentally screwed up some settings before, and deleted files and such, there better then they used to be, but i don't want to take any chances. I am looking for a program of some kind to block certain actions, such as right click properties on the start menu tool bar, etc. i have made there accounts have classic folders, i have hidden the my computer icon from the desktop and start menu so that they only see "my documents." however, because they have messed my system up before, i just want piece of mind and have a program block certain things that i select.
Does anyone know of a way I can get Windows XP to cause all window resize actions to "snap-to-grid"?Basically, I want Windows to make the window size of all my apps to conform to an invisible grid with grid lines every 20 or 30 pixels, say. This capability exists for icons on the desktop, but apparently not for application windows.I found reference online to a registry setting called Grid Granularity. However, even though that setting exists in XP, it appears to be ignored. I also found a note from someone who said he thought there was some shareware that would allow you to do this. However, I've searched for literally two hours, and can't find what I want. I thought this would be such a common desire that it would either be built into Windows or available in any of a dozen shareware desktop enhancements.But after looking at several of the top desktop enhancement packages, I can't find anyone who provides this feature.
I turned on my comp to find a blank desktop. The wallpaper appears but there is no taskbar and no desktop icons. This is the same for each user on the system. I was able to start the task manager and run a command prompt from there which allowed me to run some programs but not windows explorer. My system restore also seems to have been turned off and all restore points removed.
I managed to run a virus check with AVG free edition which detected an executable file 'charlie.exe' in the my pictures folder for two of the users saying they were trojans 'trojan horse backdoor.generic8.fjs'. AVG deleted these but, as I suspected, did not cure the problem. I have also run adaware but this never detected anything other than a handful of tracking cookies. I have downloaded Hijack this V2.0.0, but will wait for advice before posting a log.
Whenever I open my IE 6 (Windows XP), I can not maximize it. It is running only on my Taskbar (Task manager shows that IE is running) and even when I right click and choose maximize, it will not. I reinstalled IE 6 and it still didn't help. The way I browse now is by opening a window (like my computer) and typing the url in the address bar, or by using Netscape Browser.
Every day about once or twice, I get extremely annoyed after my computer reaches 100% CPU usage and stays there, most of the times forcing me to sit in front of it, ending processes on Task Manager until finally I'm able to restart, taking 10 minutes of my time, especially because when I return to Windows after rebooting, my 4 toolbars in the taskbar, including 40+ shortcuts in the Quick Launch bar, disappear, forcing me to manually reorganize them (which I do with help from the latest screenshot I've taken).
The culprits are explorer.exe (surprise, surprise ), other times CCApp.exe (Norton Internet Security 2005's user session manager), and last time rundll32.exe, which I closed and then, believe it or not, firefox.exe was taking 100% CPU (I'm sure it has nothing to do with Firefox though, maybe a problem with an extension since I have more than 35, but I doubt it). I do not use Internet Explorer, and I don't have any viruses (just checked last night).
Also, spyware is out of the question here (checked about 3 days ago and I'm doing fine, in fact I haven't had any type of spyware in 3 or 4 months (since switching to Firefox it's almost like spyware doesn't exist, what a coincidence), other than tracking cookies, and I've checked with both Spybot and Ad-Aware SE 1.05 with all the most thorough settings).
I'm running Windows XP Home Edition with SP2 on a Dell Inspiron 5150 (3 GHz P4, 512 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD), nVidia GeForce FX Go5200 graphics card (latest nVidia drivers), latest BIOS from Dell, etc....
I was listening to music yesterday when this randomly happened. I can manually start explorer.exe through the task manager, everything appears for a few seconds, but then it disappears again. I have tried system restore, and restore to last known good configuration, but they didn't work. I ran my spysweeper, and it picked up an adware called "Virtumonde".
If I restart my computer (a Dell Dimension 9750) I get a flashing icon at top left of screen. None of usual keys or mouse works. In 5 minutes time it then comes to life and after a further minute or so I get normal desktop. This happens every time. I checked the MSCONFIG "Boot Ini" and it is OK. Has anyone come across this or known what is causing it ? I have tried System Restore and Registry check to no avail. I even tried the Dell restore which reverts to what you get when computer first received.
I have about 80 computers running in a domain environment.All are winxp pro sp2 or better. The server in Windows 2003 sp2. What I've been experiencing is when a user logs in sometimes explorer doesn't start. Its very random. I can't find a pattern. I just have the user ctrl-atl-del, log off and log back in and all is fine. We are running Symantec AV 10.2 (10.1.7.7000 is what is installed on each pc). I know this is the cause of the problem because of 2 reasons. I uninstalled Symantec AV and the issue disappeared. Also I just upgraded one client from SAV 10.2 to SEP11 and the same thing just started to happen with them. I know others on the net have uncounted the same thing but I have yet seen the fix.
Every now and then the icons in the system tray freeze, and when I put my mouse over the windows the text disappears and the tool tips are blank black squares... how can I fix this? >.> (a temporary for me to fix this problem is to kill the explorer.exe process and restart it)
I'm running a Dell Inspiron 6400 with Windows XP Home on it.My problem is as such:When ever I close an explorer window, the taskbar and desktop icons disappear for a few seconds...Its quite annoying, and it also closes any other Windows I have open.Programs don't seem to be affected.Has anyone come across this problem? And are there any solutions?
I have a few computers in my office that take 10 minutes to 30-45 minutes. When booting it never even gets to the logon screen, it stays at "applying computer settings" for a very long time, but does eventually allow the user to logon.
How do I tell XP to write the data NOW? It is very tiresome when one goes to shut down, and watch all the drives power up to receive those last bytes of data that would be lost forever if the system crashed.Is there a setting that allows one to force XP to perform these writes at an appropriate time,e.g., BEFORE powering down a disc? Or preferably with no delayed writes whatsoever?
"Windows Delayed Write Failed Windows was unable to save all the data for the file E:$Mft"started getting this error pop in in WinXP every 10 or 15 minutes for a couple days on my desktop..i would click 'ok' and things seemed fine..however i eventually googled it cuz it's not the most attractive (comforting) mssg
this has been bothering me for weeks and not a single thing I've tried has solved it. It's really a problem now, because I can't just not back my stuff up forever, I have to get this sorted out.I have a PC that I keep all my stuff on, run uTorrent on, my media center application, etc. It's got 8 HDDs. Half for storage, half for backup. 5TB overall (well less...but you know). I have an application that runs once a day to sync the drives with their counterparts. Everything was fine, until I got a new motherboard and CPU for the system.Now.....whenever I run my backups, this message will appear. Either very rapidly, or at some point during. The whole system will slow to a near halt (it can take 30 seconds for the mouse to register movement), and the only course of action is to turn the system off and on again. It's because of this Delayed Write Failed error (it pops up, sometimes immediately....and sometimes if you let the system keep running).
I've looked online for solutions. Some of them say to disable delayed write in the HDD properties. I've done that for most drives (the drives connected to the system via a PCI-E controller card have that tick box option greyed out. Nothing I've tried has made a blind bit of difference.
i have three hard drives : 1 Hitachi 250 GB Sata 2 on Nvidia Controller 2 Samsung 80 GB Sata in RAID O on Silicon Controller 1. the problem is when i boot into windows the LAN connection (two small monitors in the taskbar) takes atleast 10 minutes to show !! and theother problem is that until tht two monitors dnt appear i dnt get any reply frm right clicking any of the drives to see their properties and frm My Computer too, but as soon as the two small monitors come all the properties just pop up.
2. Sometimes suddenly in between Windows shows Write Delayed Failed Error only on the Raid Drives and i cnt access them afterwards,restarting solves the problem tho but jst for sumtime.
I wiped my disc and reinstalled XP Pro. I can get on but it is irritating that the system pauses until I hit an Enter before it loads. This means I can't start the machine and walk away and have it up when I return. There is no password and a simple Enter is accepted. How can I get the system to come up without requiring this interaction on my part?
I have issues over here. I can log on, i get my welcome screen and choose my profile and then i freeze, i can't run anything. I can see my icons but my profile freezes, when i choose another profile, it lets you choose a program, and then that freezes
With XP Pro SP2, I enable "Group similar taskbar buttons". I generally have my taskbar stretched 2 to 3 rows even so. Sometimes, when I have a lot of windows open, and the similar taskbar buttons group and stack themselves, so 1 button contains 2 or 3 open tasks, I can't get any action out of the buttons that represent multiple open tasks.
Any of the taskbar buttons that represent a single open task are fine. But any buttons that represent multiple open tasks don't respond. I have to do Alt - Tab to bring a task to the front, if it's one of the tasks on a button that represents a group. Or I can go to Taskbar Properties, and deselect "Group similar taskbar buttons".
I've just switched from 98 to XP. I find now that the window designations in the taskbar for my *browser windows only* are severely and unaccountably truncated. My browser is IE6. Even if there's only one window open, if it's a browser window, only one letter will display. Other windows will properly display the full name. I've turned taskbar grouping on and off with no change. I've also run the SFC utility, with no change. There is no such problem in my Win98 machine, and my security settings (and all other settings) are the same. I don't wish to upgrade to IE7.
I want to see all task bar buttons and not have them grouped. XP Taskbar menu offers check "Group similar taskbar buttons." I leave this unchecked, then Apply, then OK. XP still groups the similar buttons (e.g., Word doc1, Word doc2, etc.) instead of having these ungrouped.
have a laptop win xp pro, wont start up, get a screen giving me the option to start windows normal or in safe mode and so on.tried all of them just keeps on restarting, tried to boot with my win xp disc but no response from cd rom, does not seem to be working.
Did a system manufacturer install(wiped everything)..Went thru process 2 days ago...Computer was working great, best it had run in awhile...Today when I turned it on I was able to move the cursor around but nothing could be clicked on except for the initial 5-8 secs Windows came on, I was able to click on icons but it wasn't long enough to run before the computer froze....I'm worried I have a hardware failure because the software ran fine for 2 days..Computer is 5 yrs old..
I come now with a new problem. I pretended for some time I did not care, but that is now making me pull the hair from my head.I installed something (which I did not pay attention to at that time and I don't remember what it was) and too many other programs after that (programs I constantly use, and therefore I don't want to get rid of). If I roll back my computer to an earlier time to dismiss this problem, I would be uninstalling all those valuable programs I am talking about
I am on an XP2 home edition pc - toshiba satellite celeron. Within the past few days, I've had a terrible time with slow keystroke response. I first noticed this a month or so ago whilst in the MSN Spaces blog sites on just a few of the spaces that I frequented. Now, it seems to be every place (even here while I'm typing this). However, it doesn't seem to be a problem with MSN messenger, or Skype. I've run 2 different spyware apps (Spyware doctor & spybot search & destroy) and a full virus scan (avast). I did a restore back to June 13, prior to the Microsoft updates. Still the slow response is happening.
Could someone please help look to see what is making this computer so slow to respond to commands. I added RAM and it still seems busy doing something most of the time.It is my Mom's computer and I'm trying to help her with it. Just got it on high speed hoping that would help by letting the programs update in the background.
