Unexplained hangups in Explorer

[Guest Gary Fritz]

What causes mystery hangups in the Windows Explorer?

 

I'm running XP Home on a 3.0 GHz system with 2GB of RAM. Sometimes

Explorer will get into a state where almost any action -- scrolling the

foler listing in the left pane, selecting a new folder, etc -- locks up the

Explorer for anywhere from 10sec to a minute or more. Often opening a new

Explorer window will get around the problem for a while (the new Explorer

works fine while the old one is still hung), but generally the new one will

get hung up before long too.

 

Task Manager says the CPU is idle; System Idle Process is taking up 95% or

more. System Monitor doesn't show any increase in disk activity (looking

at Avg Disk Queue Length, Disk Reads/sec, Disk Writes/sec, and Pages/sec).

As far as I can tell NOTHING is happening, but the Explorer just sits

there, hung, until it decides to run again. Why?

 

A somewhat-similar-but-unrelated issue: often when I pull down the Address

bar in Explorer (to select a different disk or quickly navigate up), it

hangs up for several (5-10) seconds. I'm assuming this is because it has

to hit all disks for some reason, and some of them are dormant and have to

spin up first. True? Or is something else going on?

 

Thanks!

Gary

[Guest Gary Fritz]

Re: Unexplained hangups in Explorer

 

Ah -- I may have figured out the cause right after posting my question.

 

I often connect to a client network with a VPN connection. I was on the

VPN when I experienced those hangs this morning. I tried closing the VPN

connection and shazam: no problems in Explorer.

 

Some of the objects in the Explorer folder listing (network drives, etc)

are on my local LAN, and thus are inaccessible while I'm on the VPN. Even

though I was doing no more than scrolling the folder listing, maybe

Explorer was trying to touch the drives somehow and hanging until it gave

up?

 

If that's it, is there any way to get around it other than closing the VPN

connection? I have to be on the VPN a lot, and Explorer is almost unusable

in this state.

 

Gary

[Guest Patrick Keenan]

Re: Unexplained hangups in Explorer

 

"Gary Fritz" <fritzxxx@xxxfrii.com> wrote in message

news:Xns99815E66E4BCFfritzfriicom@216.168.3.50...

> What causes mystery hangups in the Windows Explorer?

>

> I'm running XP Home on a 3.0 GHz system with 2GB of RAM. Sometimes

> Explorer will get into a state where almost any action -- scrolling the

> foler listing in the left pane, selecting a new folder, etc -- locks up

> the

> Explorer for anywhere from 10sec to a minute or more. Often opening a new

> Explorer window will get around the problem for a while (the new Explorer

> works fine while the old one is still hung), but generally the new one

> will

> get hung up before long too.

>

> Task Manager says the CPU is idle; System Idle Process is taking up 95% or

> more. System Monitor doesn't show any increase in disk activity (looking

> at Avg Disk Queue Length, Disk Reads/sec, Disk Writes/sec, and Pages/sec).

> As far as I can tell NOTHING is happening, but the Explorer just sits

> there, hung, until it decides to run again. Why?

>

> A somewhat-similar-but-unrelated issue: often when I pull down the

> Address

> bar in Explorer (to select a different disk or quickly navigate up), it

> hangs up for several (5-10) seconds. I'm assuming this is because it has

> to hit all disks for some reason, and some of them are dormant and have to

> spin up first. True? Or is something else going on?

>

> Thanks!

> Gary

 

Look again with Process Explorer rather than Task Manager. this wll give

you a *much* better idea of what is actually happenng.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx

 

I have seen failing drives cause slowdowns like this.

 

HTH

-pk

[Guest Gary Fritz]

Re: Unexplained hangups in Explorer

 

"Patrick Keenan" <test@dev.null> wrote:

> Look again with Process Explorer rather than Task Manager. this wll

> give you a *much* better idea of what is actually happenng.

 

I'm not seeing anything more happening with Process Explorer. A percent of

CPU here, half a percent there, but System Idle Process is still accounting

for 95% or more of the CPU when the Explorer hangs. Exactly the same as

when the Explorer isn't hung.

> I have seen failing drives cause slowdowns like this.

 

Hm, possible. But as I mentioned in my second post, I think it may be

related to the VPN. I'm not 100% certain on that, but it does seem to come

and go with the VPN connection.

 

Gary