Explorer.exe freezing / locking

I use Windows XP Home and my Explorer.exe has random freezes that last a few
minutes before it starts running again, but only for about 20 seconds and
then it freezes again.

This problem just occurred today when all that seems to be new on my
computer is windows updated and Norton Anti-Vir update.

To no avail, I have tried Dxdiag, surfing the internet, and ending Explorer
in the task manager and running another instance of Explorer, but they all
still freeze randomly.

Does anyone know how to fix this without reinstalling XP?

Thanks

Have you scanned for trojans and spyware?

Internet Explorer stops responding, stops working, or restarts:
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/pc_ie_intro

Try my Explorer shell fix tool. Download it here
http://pcbutts1.com/downloads/tools/tools.htm

How much RAM?

Try Ctrl+Alt+Delete to select Task Manager and click the Performance
Tab. Under Commit Charge what is the Total, the Limit and the Peak?

You should be able to gather more information from Task Manager. With
the Processes tab open select View, Select, Columns and check the boxes
before Peak Memory Usage and Virtual Memory size. What are the figures
for the 6 processes using the largest amounts?

Open Disk Defragmenter and click on Analyse. Select View Report and
click on Save As and Save. Now find VolumeC.txt in your My Documents
Folder and post a copy. Do this before running Disk Defragmenter as it
is more informative.

How many Internet Explorer Add-Ons?

On the same site as filthy pornographic materials created by butts.

Do you really want to support his filth by visiting his site?

It's not internet explorer, its explorer.exe the comp navigation program

So what are you typically doing when the problem arises?

What are the answers to my other questions?

It occurs whenever I do anything, open a folder, right click something, start
a program. Basically to not have a complete lock up or wait couple of minutes
to do something I have to run everything through the Task Manager and
sometimes even that freezes.

I have only 1 gig of RAM.

For Commit Charge:
Total: 292000ish at the moment
Limit: 3127924
Peak: 473500

As far as the Peak Memory Usage and Virtual Memory size go, mine doesn't
have the option to display those.

I'll post the Defrag once I can get it to work.

I have also now tried the System Restore feature and that can't complete the
action for an unspecified reason.

Did you try my fix tool?

[collinsauve]

Explorer.exe is a piece of Microsoft garbage. It sucks, it doesn't work.
I work with computers all day, I have several xp + multiple OS virtual machines + servers. Every day I have to kill explorer.exe at least 5 times because it hangs. There's not much that can be done about it until MS fixes it.

Have a look in the System and Application logs in Event Viewer for
Errors and Warnings and post copies here. Don't post any more than 48
hours ago.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.

[collinsauve]

Disclaimer: I do not hate Microsoft. In fact I use many of their products. I am a .Net developer and therefore am very much tied to Windows and so far havn't found all that much to complain about EXCEPT for Explorer.exe.

The purpose of my post was not to solicit help. The purpose was to say that Explorer can't be fixed, it was programmed poorly and has inherent issues.

The main problem with it is that it does all processing on the UI thread.
This includes several things, but the most common that ive noticed are;
1. Checking the registry for registered handlers for file types. This is why you might find the right-click menu takes forever to come up. Or the File menu. Or the view-explorer bar menu.
2. Establishing connections to network drives. This is why explorer hangs for long periods of time when it starts, and also when other programs use the windows common dialog controls for open/save/saveas and the user pulls down the combo box for a list of drives. If you have any network drives where the server cannot be reached, and windows hasn't yet flagged the drive as disconnected, the UI thread will block while it waits for the tcpip request to timeout attempting to reach that server.

There are several other cases that will cause explorer to hang/crash.

Another problem with it is that windows uses the same process for all explorer windows + the start menu + the desktop. Even if you set it in the options to "open explorer windows in a separate process", only certain use-cases actually do this. "My computer" from the desktop DOES NOT. WindowsKey+E DOES NOT. Only Start-Run-"c:\" or some other drive/folder will actually spawn it in another process.

What this amounts to is that while one explorer window is busy waiting for something (on the UI thread because thats what this piece of garbage does), is ALL OTHER explorer windows PLUS the desktop PLUS the start menu , they all hang.

So basically, don't try to fix it, it was broken when Microsoft shipped it to you in the first place