Explorer.exe consuming 80% of one CPU

Ever caused by Fences, Windowblinds, etc.?

from Stardock Forums

My Explorer.exe process is consistently consuming around 80% of one CPU, even when I'm not actively using it, searching, etc.  I don't have Windows Search 4.0, Google Desktop, or other file indexing tasks running.  Has anyone ever seen a Stardock app cause this?  Fences, WB, or Multiplicity perhaps?

I'm running WinXP Pro SP3.

If not a Stardock app, does anyone know a good way to turn off Explorer.exe hooks, context menus, etc. other apps put in?

7,578 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

If it is one of our products, I doubt it would be Multiplicity, as that uses its own process.  If you want to be sure about the others, you could try uninstalling them one at a time, rebooting, and seeing if it's still happening.  (Don't worry, as long as you don't tell the uninstaller to delete settings, it should restore your fences when you reinstall).  If it is one of our programs, email us at support@stardock.com and we'll go from there.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks Rosco.  Will do.

DeskScapes - Bring your desktop background to life.
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

You could also grab Process Explorer, find the Explorer.exe process, double click it and look under the "Threads" tab to see if it indicates what is using all the CPU.


Mike

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Already tried that.  It just shows the main explorer.exe thread.  None of the .dlls are causing it.  I tried the "bad AVI" registry fix, which seems to have worked so far.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Some have mentioned the 'Lock Fences' option as being the culprit.  While we're looking into it, try disabling it, and let us know if that helps.

Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Same here. Fences Pro using up to 90% of CPU. Must uninstall to repair. Very frustrating. Task Manager says Explorer is consuming 189 Mg of memory also.

 

The only cure is to uninstall Fences.

 

Help!

Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting grndady, reply 6
Same here. Fences Pro using up to 90% of CPU. Must uninstall to repair. Very frustrating. Task Manager says Explorer is consuming 189 Mg of memory also.

 

The only cure is to uninstall Fences.

 

Help!
End of grndady's quote

Are you running any other explorer addins like Deskscapes?

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Yikes - Ok, CPU issue was indeed a problem on XP systems; thanks to the help of users sending in their debug log we were able to figure out what happened! Please give Fences an update using Impulse to the new version released today and see if that helps. Thanks...

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

The new build seems to have resolved the issue for me.  By twiddling with explorer settings and fences settings I was able to get it down to 20% utilization, but the new build has explorer idling properly around 2%.

Btw, a four-day response time to fix this--and having the fix on Sunday--is really good.  Thanks for the extra effort.  Cheers!

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

:) you're very welcome. happy holidays!

Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Hi,

I've had the same issues: extremely high disk activity caused by Fences writing non-stop to a debug log. Explorer.exe process running at 90%, disk activity continuously extremely high. IBM ThinkPad T60 with 3GB RAM, running Windows XP.

Uninstalled Fences and immediately my system started to behave normally again.

Downloaded Fences again from the Stardock site just now (8 Jan 2010) as thread above suggests there has been a fix. The CNET download page says it's "v1.0" but looking at the version number in the downloaded file this has "v0.95.0.0" (date 4 Nov 2009). So am guessing the fix has not been made available publicly yet?

Anyway, I installed the downloaded version from CNET and disk activity straightaway shot up to crazy levels again. Inspecting I confirmed this was due to continuous writing to a Fences debug log - i.e. same issue.

Uninstalled again immediately and back to normal - idling - activity again.

Is there an updated version of Fences available that corrects this issue? Where can I get this?

Many thanks.