Ok, the problem I have been having for a long while is after browsing through a large amount of folders, the folders begin to open very slowly. Is there any hotfix known that could fix this? Thanks

Try some of the following:

- Make sure your Antivirus software is working and up-to-date
- Make sure that you have sufficent Anti Spyware software installed and do regular checks using it [as well as keeping it up-to-date]. Also, be careful that you are not actually using a fake antispyware program - as of course, it will do nothing and probably give u more spyware.
- Run Defrag on your hard drive after using scandisk to check and fix any errors.
- clear out old temporary files
- check the registry for errors and use a registry optimiser [like CCleaner] to clean it up [dont manually edit the registry unless you really know what you are doing]

Try that little lot and let us know how that goes.

Cheers
Nath.

It's a known problem affecting all versions of Windows up to XP apparently. It may also occur with several Internet Explorer windows opened and has apparently something to see with the taskbar. Explorer.exe enters in a loop consuming anything between 5 and 20% of CPU, usually in a thread named class:CLIPBRDWNDCLASS (according to Taskinfo). When it enters this loop, even though explorer uses as little as 5% of CPU (instead of max 0.6-0.7 % normally), the entire file manager system becomes extremely sluggish and behaves as you describe.

The only workaround I know is to kill and restart the shell (explorer.exe). There is an utility to do this :

http://nirsoft.net/utils/restart_explorer.html

I am personally not using it. I am using a script instead to kill not only the shell but also some other apps who have got an icon in the tray and whose icon does not show up again in the tray after using the above util. The script kills explorer + some tray apps and restarts in sequence, explorer and the tray apps that had been killed so I have all my tray icons back.

In some cases, there is nothing you can do, even killing and restarting the explorer does not solve it. It would seem that some background tasks are interfering negatively there. One such app is eMule, an other one is possibly Zone Alarm (that I don't use anymore as I have ditched it for Jetico). Closing those apps might help.

If nothing helps, you can just reboot.

Also, a file named webcheck.dll triggers those semi freezes quite easilly but they won't occur specifically when browsing a large amount of folders or having severall IE windows opened for a long time but at anytime. The CPU hog will, in this case show up in the webcheck thread under explorer.exe in Taskinfo.
Killing and restarting the explorer always clear up this one unlike the other but it can also be prevented to happen by unregistering webcheck.dll that is useless unless you are using Active Desktop (Html wallpaper updated online for example).

I believe that the problem you describe is the main reason why some people are using 98 lited OSes with the pre-IE4 Win 95 desktop, systems on which I understand this problem does not occur but are also much less functional unfortunately.

PS : Also do regular scandisks (once a fortnight or month is enough usually) and fix errors as this also affects the stability of explorer apparently.

HTH. (LOL)

Thanks guys, im checking out Explorestart right now, hopefully it will solve my problem. Wish me luck

Thanks again

Kill the MRUs.

Delete completely the whole subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StreamMRU
and
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams

(Explorer will recreate StreamMRU and Streams when it restarts)

HEre's a noob question...

what does removing the MRu lines from the registry do?

I would not delete HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams if I was you, unless you want to loose your desktop and taskbar settings.

MRU means Most Recently Used.

When you open a folder and change its view for example, it will be stored in this key so that the next time you open the folder, it will be in the view you left it.

When you delete this key it will reset all folders to default view.

The BEST fix is to use an alternative file manager:
For example the free version of explorer²

That fix all of a sudden all the issues you may have with the widely incomplete and buggy Explorer.


Here are ohter example (sorry no link, just the exe)

abclt33-setup.exe 589.824 bytes
Simple, facile mais montre toujours deux paneaux et a un "tree" séparé dans une petite fenêtre.
Copie nom et chemin dans le clipboard.

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fileant.exe 1.976.712 bytes
Pas mal mais lent et ne retient pas le dernier dossier ouvert.

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gxexplorer0994.zip 1.099.007 bytes
Pas très rapide et crash si il doit faire trop the thumbnails. Avantage: pas d'installation.

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filecomander_2005-09a_setup.exe 1.635.024 bytes
Bon programme mais montre toujours deux paneaux. Au moin on peu en cacher un.

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dfileman101.zip 215.488 bytes
A basic file manager. Its very minimalistic, and has a few UI enhancements over explorer. Its pretty light weight too. Not much clutter in the UI if any.

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Explorer_patch.zip 74.427 bytes