I have been on XP Pro SP2 for nearly 2 year. Explorer.exe has been getting flakier and flakier. When using windows explorer, at some point, it stops working and the application shows the status as "not responding" in the task manager. I am forced to end the application within the application tab. This afternoon, I have been getting a "not responding" status more regularly. I have been meaning to re-install XP with SP3 but I don't have the time right now and I leaving on a long trip in 3 weeks. Although, I am not sure if this would fix the problem, can I restore a clean copy of explorer.exe.

You can reload a clean copy of IE and your bookmarks should stay intact. You probably should download latest version from MS to ensue you have the latest copy.

You can reload a clean copy of IE and your bookmarks should stay intact. You probably should download latest version from MS to ensue you have the latest copy.

Thanks but my problem is with Windows Explorer not the MS' browser Internet Explorer.

create a batch with the following and run it when explorer misbehaves :-)

@echo off

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

start explorer.exe

Restoring a copy of explorer.exe won't fix anything...

Have you checked the event viewer logs? If not, I suggest you start there. Also scan your computer for viruses and malware.

Poorly written 3rd party shell extensions may also cause Windows Explorer to crash. Use ShellExView (freeware) to view and disable shell extensions.

You really should upgrade to SP3. No need to do a fresh install, just let windows update handle it for you.

As part of the update you'll install Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool which has been widely reported to identify issues crashing Explorer.exe, such as Gaobot Worm for example.

Does the hang happen with al folders you try to view, or just those with huge amounts of data (~100G+)?

You could also try increasing the size of your page file, beyond the standard 1.5 x RAM to see if this fixes the issue.

Have you tried all of the obvious things - defragged HDD and registry for example? Recent virus/malware/spyware scan?

Thanks for the info.

Although I have had these explorer.exe problems for about a year, usually once a day, if not more. As I said, the day I started this thread even though I rebooted at least 3 or 4 times, the problem kept coming back and rather quickly to. Yesterday and today not one instance of the problem even though I did similar work. Sometimes I think a PC you have owned for several years, begin to develop a life of its own. The PC felt I was getting too frustrated so has given me a rest.

Btw I keep track of my task manager processes. I have documented everyone one I should have. Anytime I see one that isn't on my list, I do a search to find out what it is. I have loads of free software to keep me relatively safe, ZA, Avira, Spybot, Malwarebytes. I also defrag fairly regularly. I may try increasing the page file size.

As I wrote, when I come back from my extended trip, I will reload XP Pro with SP3.