It never dies. I have to end it in task manager for it to really end. After a while of having my computer on it just accumulates crazy amounts of explorer.exe processes that are using about the same amount of memory as the one before it. This has happened ever since I installed Windows 7 and I was wondering why it does this.
I always have 1 explorer.exe running. If there are multiple explorer.exe's running, I suspect it could be a virus.
Scan your computer with http://www.malwarebytes.org/ and http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro to make sure your PC isn't infected.
Well it could be a bad codec causing explorer to hang. USUSALY explorer wil just crash on you if that happens (When navigating to a folder with "media" in it), but maybe this is more subtle.
Have you installed any codec packs or something like that?
Suggest you do a Clean Boot to see if a program is spawning the extra processes.
How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7
If the problem goes away, then enable a few programs at a time to see if one of them is the cause. A Guy
it happens just randomly while i'm using my computer, when i open a new explorer it sometimes hangs around after the show's over (after the window is closed)
i only have standard stuff. nvidia graphics driver, skype, msn, etc.
yeah the divx codec pack and maybe another one that i can't remember right now.
i'm 100% sure it isn't a virus. i don't run programs that could subject my computer to viruses. this has happened on pre-release versions of windows 7 on my old system and it was just an install and test kind of thing, it wasn't even connected to the internet.
I found this info:
Multiple explorer instances can be launched by applications that call on it in an improper way. One example is uTorrent, which launches +1 explorer no matter what when you click 'open containing folder'. Also it must be noted that on 64bit some programs that normally pop up explorer windows will launch the 32-bit version of explorer. This can be seen in the task manager as "explorer.exe *32".
You can thus have one explorer for the desktop, one for folders, and an x32 explorer if launched by some programs.
In this discussion which has a couple of other suggestions.
A Guy
Well to go one step further with the codec investigation. I'd say try opening an explorer instance, don't navigate anywhere, then closing it. See if that one sticks inthe process list.
Then try again but navigate to a folder with movie files in it and close and see if that one sticks.
In fact you can also test along A Guys route by checking every time ou open and close explorer for a while (Keep the task list opej all the time and sorted by name). You can then see if it's the explorers your launching or maybe ones being launched behind you r back by something.
Did you change the default location that explorer opens to? Like changing to from the library page to Computer or C:. The only time I've heard of people having this problem (when it wasn't caused by a virus) was when they changed the place you go to when opening explorer normally.
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