Windows Explorer taking 30 per cent of cpu time!

As the subject says- suddenly windows 8 pro reduced to a crawl with blue
screen in between every mouse click. Task Manager showed Windows
Explorer to be stuck in some kind of constant use.

I rebooted in safe mode (ran fine); disabled all other startups and
services and rebooted. Same problem, indicating it wasn't a problem with
another service, program or driver.

In the end I had to go back to a previous restore point, and all was
well. If I remember rightly, the only programs I had installed since
that restore point were Google Chrome and the latest update to Clipmate
- both of which I have now reinstalled without a problem.

Any ideas on why the file explorer should suddenly get the hump like
that? TIA, Peter

Peter Roe wrote:
As the subject says- suddenly windows 8 pro reduced to a crawl with blue
screen in between every mouse click. Task Manager showed Windows
Explorer to be stuck in some kind of constant use.

I rebooted in safe mode (ran fine); disabled all other startups and
services and rebooted. Same problem, indicating it wasn't a problem with
another service, program or driver.

In the end I had to go back to a previous restore point, and all was
well. If I remember rightly, the only programs I had installed since
that restore point were Google Chrome and the latest update to Clipmate
- both of which I have now reinstalled without a problem.

Any ideas on why the file explorer should suddenly get the hump like
that? TIA, Peter

"Suddenly"

I'd be reviewing my Windows Update history, and see how "suddenly" aligns
with the most recently installed updates.

Now that you've restored, those updates are probably sitting there,
awaiting a chance to install. (You could try manually installing
them one at a time.)

Another possibility, is your AV software received a bad update,
and that was what tipped over your setup.

Paul

On 05/03/2013 10:02, Paul wrote:
Peter Roe wrote:
As the subject says- suddenly windows 8 pro reduced to a crawl with
blue screen in between every mouse click. Task Manager showed Windows
Explorer to be stuck in some kind of constant use.

I rebooted in safe mode (ran fine); disabled all other startups and
services and rebooted. Same problem, indicating it wasn't a problem
with another service, program or driver.

In the end I had to go back to a previous restore point, and all was
well. If I remember rightly, the only programs I had installed since
that restore point were Google Chrome and the latest update to
Clipmate - both of which I have now reinstalled without a problem.

Any ideas on why the file explorer should suddenly get the hump like
that? TIA, Peter

"Suddenly"

I'd be reviewing my Windows Update history, and see how "suddenly" aligns
with the most recently installed updates.

Now that you've restored, those updates are probably sitting there,
awaiting a chance to install. (You could try manually installing
them one at a time.)

Another possibility, is your AV software received a bad update,
and that was what tipped over your setup.

Paul
Thanks Paul. If it's of interest, I manually ran(one by one) four
waiting updates - no recurrence of the slow Explorer problem. As you
say, it could have been my anti virus- AVG - there's no way I can see to
see an update history there.
I guess I'll just keep saving everything and my fingers crossed for a
while :-)