Windows 7 Explorer.exe high CPU

M

Mark1990

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Oct 17, 2012
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Hi i'm new here, and im in need of help.

For a few weeks now explorer.exe has been misbehaving.
It does not do it after bootup but it always starts using 10-15% of my i7-2600 devided over several threads/cores after i have played a game of league of legends.

I have tried the folowing:
- turning of all 3rd party shell extensions, using shellexview.
- reinstaling league of legends.
- used procesexplorer to try and pinpoint the misbehaving entry, and it just shows explorer.exe.
- reinstaling graphic drivers (i got new ones for a new graphics card just before this started).
- runing any other game or graphics application does not produce this problem.
- killing explorer.exe, when its down my cpu drops to normal usage, when i restart it using taskmanager it starts to consume alot of cpu again.
-tried killing explorer.exe before/during gaming and restarting after gaming, did not work.

A few details about my system:
- Asus desktop CM6730 (dont know wich motherboard it has).
- Windows home premium service pack 1.
- Intel core i7-2600.
- EVGA gtx 660 ti (now using the nvidia drives, before using the EVGA drivers).
- 8gb of ddr3 1333mhz memorie.
- 600 PSU (should be/is enough).
- Trend micro titanium maximum security antivirus.

A few details about the problem:
- If i leave my computer be and dont do anything the cpu will after some time drop to normal levels and every so often spike up to 10-15% again and then go back down and continue to increase and discrease.
- If i move my mouse my cpu will instantly climb up to 10-15% and stay there, and will only drop a while after i stoped moving my mouse.
- If i kill explorer.exe moving my mouse does not provide the cpu increase.

I would like to fix this without the need of restoring to a previous point.

So i hope that there is someone that is willing to help me with this, i can send .dpm files and such if needed.

Sincerely Mark.
 
Solution
M
Thanks again for your reply,

I guess i have not paid enough attention to the process explorer, i never looked at the tab "threads".
I did now though, it show its SHLWAPI.dll!SHRegGetUSValueW+0x1a4 that is using the cpu power, suspending or killing it confirms it because cpu returns to normal, this does not fix it however because explorer.exe then just crashes and restarts and then te cpu usage increases again.
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About the only way to see what is happening is to leave Task Manager open and set the CPU column so higher activity comes to the top. If you check it before and during the problem, you might catch something.

If that doesn't give you the info you need, you might want to go to Process Explorer, for SysInternals, which is a powered up Task Manager. Perhaps you could see what is taking the CPU.

Resource Monitor could also be helpful, if you check explorer.exe in the list, it will show what that utility is doing, but it does not appear to show CPU usage..

It could be several things, the game doing some type of house cleaning, anti-virus scans or updates, Windows House Cleaning, etc. Is there any amount of time for it to stop, perhaps after it cools down?
 
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Thanks for your reply,

Taskmanager, process explorer and resource monitor dont show what part of explorer.exe is using al the cpu power.
The usage does not decrease after shuting down the game completely, nor does the weird behavior stop if i would leave it be for a few hours.
If only i could pinpoint the sub-process of explorer.exe thats using al that power, but i have not been able to yet.

This might be unrelated to the problem but i can almost constantly hear my harddrive working, i did not have this in the past.
Explorer.exe seems to only use cpu power on core 0, 2, 4 and 6.

Edit: It seems like the cpu ,usage time and percentage corolate to the amount and time i move my mouse, maybe this is helpful.
And my cpu no longer spikes when i leave my mouse alone.

Edit2: Cpu usage also seems to be increased by typing altough not as much as moving my mouse but around 3-6%.
 
Last edited:
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So you opened Process Explorer, looked at its properties and threads, and none of those threads show increased CPU activity, but explorer.exe does? You can also suspend some threads to see if the problem stops. But doing so may cause require a reboot to get your system working again if you pick somehthing important.

Moving your mouse might be indicative of the problem, but if it only happens after running the game, the game must be leaving something that is still being worked. But since I don't have your system, I can only guess.

If you want to go one step further, let process monitor run for a couple of minutes while the problem is occuring. It might show an increase in some process, but it may just be explorer itself.
 
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Thanks again for your reply,

I guess i have not paid enough attention to the process explorer, i never looked at the tab "threads".
I did now though, it show its SHLWAPI.dll!SHRegGetUSValueW+0x1a4 that is using the cpu power, suspending or killing it confirms it because cpu returns to normal, this does not fix it however because explorer.exe then just crashes and restarts and then te cpu usage increases again.
 
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Solution
We are getting a little over my head now, but it looks like the thread is checking the registry for a value. You might try looking at the stack to see if you notice anything familiar that might be requesting the checks. I show several SLHWAPI.dll threads, but none are checking the registry, currently.

If you are running a basic system, with no other utilites running, you might try suspending other processes/utilities to see if the thread terminates. Do you show exactly the same presentation in Process Explorer when the problem is occuring and when it isn't--no extra entries during the problem?
 
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Thank you both for the input,

I tryed checkdisk and sfc /scannow both several times and they came up emptie.
I have also checked the threads for explorer.exe before and during the problem and there was no noticable (i think) difference other than the increased cpu usage for SHLWAPI.dll.
I did take a look at the stack for this specific SHLWAPI.dll thread it contaned (during the bug):
ntdll.dll!NtFreeVirtualMemory+0xa
ntdll.dll!RtlDestroyHandleTable+0x56
ntdll.dll!RtlDestroyHeap+0x196
ntdll.dll!RtlDestroyHeap+0xcd
KERNELBASE.dll!HeapDestroy+0xa
nvd3dumx.dll!QueryOglResource+0x1db3e9
nvd3dumx.dll!QueryOglResource+0x1d483a
nvd3dumx.dll+0x81b835
ntdll.dll!RtlQueueWorkItem+0x6e2
ntdll.dll!LdrUnloadDll+0x4a
KERNELBASE.dll!FreeLibrary+0x25
ddraw.dll!GetSurfaceFromDC+0x9395
ddraw.dll!GetSurfaceFromDC+0x94fa
ddraw.dll!DirectDrawCreateEx+0x110aa
Explorer.EXE+0x75ea6
Explorer.EXE+0x1df2c
Explorer.EXE+0x1dea1
Explorer.EXE+0x12b0
USER32.dll!TranslateMessageEx+0x2a1
USER32.dll!SetWindowTextW+0x277
USER32.dll!IsDialogMessageW+0x169
ntdll.dll!KiUserCallbackDispatcher+0x1f
USER32.dll!KillTimer+0x1a
DUser.dll+0x10f4
DUser.dll+0x11fa
USER32.dll!KillTimer+0x61
ntdll.dll!KiUserCallbackDispatcher+0x1f
USER32.dll!PeekMessageW+0xba
USER32.dll!PeekMessageW+0x85
Explorer.EXE+0x105e
Explorer.EXE+0x230e9
SHLWAPI.dll!SHRegGetUSValueW+0x2ba
kernel32.dll!BaseThreadInitThunk+0xd
ntdll.dll!RtlUserThreadStart+0x21

This does not look familiar to me at all, nor do i understand anything about it.
So maybe you guys see something in this ?
 
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I have been watching my system to see if I could catch a thread like you are seeing, but have not seen one.

If you are not playing the game while you took this call stack, there appears to be several graphics related entries. These may be normal for that type of thread operation, but maybe some graphics component is not turning off.

Since you have changed the drivers for the video card to different suppliers, about all I can suggest is you uninstall the video card and allow it to remove all drivers. Then reload the drivers you want to use. Maybe some drivers are conflicting.

Are there any updates for the game?

But I don't see anything in the stack that would indicate some process running abnormally. But again, I may just not have enough experience to tell.
 
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Actualy i dont think that those graphics related entries are normal, since when i look at that threads stack before the problem the graphics related entries are not there.

These are the entries while running only chrome and procesexplorer without the problem:
ntoskrnl.exe!KeWaitForMultipleObjects+0xc0a
ntoskrnl.exe!KeAcquireSpinLockAtDpcLevel+0x732
ntoskrnl.exe!KeWaitForMultipleObjects+0x26a
ntoskrnl.exe!NtWaitForSingleObject+0x41f
ntoskrnl.exe!NtWaitForSingleObject+0x78e
ntoskrnl.exe!KeSynchronizeExecution+0x3a23
ntdll.dll!ZwWaitForMultipleObjects+0xa
KERNELBASE.dll!GetCurrentProcess+0x40
kernel32.dll!WaitForMultipleObjectsEx+0xb3
USER32.dll!GetScrollBarInfo+0x1dd
DUser.dll+0x14e6
DUser.dll+0x15ef
DUser.dll+0x1565
USER32.dll!WaitMessage+0x2e
ntdll.dll!KiUserCallbackDispatcher+0x1f
USER32.dll!WaitMessage+0xa
Explorer.EXE+0x1083
Explorer.EXE+0x230e9
SHLWAPI.dll!SHRegGetUSValueW+0x2ba
kernel32.dll!BaseThreadInitThunk+0xd
ntdll.dll!RtlUserThreadStart+0x21

Im not sure if reinstalling the drivers is going to help because with installing the nvidea drivers (before i was using the drivers suplied with the card itself from EVGA) it asked me if i wanted to do a clean install (i think this is remove all drivers and install the new one) and i selected that option, the drivers were removed and for a moment my pc had to run on integrated graphics so i assume this should have done the trick.

Sadly no updates for the game, it may actualy be what is causing this, but its unlikely since millions of people on windows 7 play this game and i have not found anything when searching for this problem and this game together.
 
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I can't really tell what is happening from the stack. Have you given any more thought to using Process Monitor to track that thread? Maybe it would show what is happening.

I still have not been able to catch a SHLWAPI.dll thread that was looking at the registry and user data. I do have several SHLWAPI.dll WrapperThreadProc threads but none of them show the Explorer.exe and DUser.dll entries yours does.

Let us know if Process Monitor helps any...
 
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Sorry for my late reply, i was at my girlfriends place this weekend and i folowed this thread on my phone but dint see the second page.

I dont really know how to track a thread in processexplorer, if i knew i would love to do it because i would do anything at this point to solve it.
When you compare my SHLWAPI.dll thread without the problem and your SHALWAPI.dll thread do they look alike or are there some weird entries there as well?
Also i think ill try doing a clean install of my graphics drivers again, maybe it'll help.
And maybe i can restore my pc to an earlier point, but im not sure this will solve it indefinitely, because after i install everything again what is stoping it from happening again, and ill have to reinstall all of my programs and setings.
That is why im hasitant towards doing an restore point.

I also want to say thanks for thinking with me on this problem, your help is much appreciated.
 
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Mine look about like yours, I just do not have a SHLWAPI that mentions the registry. I was hoping you would see a .ocx or something that might be actually using the CPU cycles, but I do not know where to go from here, except to try Process Monitor.
 
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