Windows 7: My Videos Using up all my ram

running Windows 7 pro 64bit, ive got 4gb or ram everything is fine on my system no problems at all never had a crash or anything.. rebuilt my rig in a new case and a new mobo reloaded Windows 7 and has been working great for about 6 months now until recently when i open windows explorer and go into my videos my ram which normally runs around 17-20% usage gradually goes up and stays at 97-98% usage and will stay there for as long as my video folder is open.. ive left it open for 10+ mins then shut down from fear of over working the memory ive tried in my computer does the same... windows explorer works fine and does not show this problem its only happening when i open my videos folder any thoughts... just a side note i do have like 1tb plus of videos about 100gb or so on the primary boot drive and around a tb on a 2nd storage drive which appears in my videos threw a sub folder... ive been like this for years and never had a problem

Well,, just a couple thoughts....

1.) Virus infected video? -- guessing

2.) Try setting to list or details without showing thumbnailed video,,, could be the thumbnail cache?

It might also be a possible corrupted video?

Are you using libraries? and having all locations linked into there? Could be trying to load all the video's thumbnails from the numerous locations.

I am only guessing cause I don't have that number of videos on my system.

You might also have an incompatible codec pack installed. The best by far for Windows 7 is the Shark007 Codec Pack, covering most (if not all) major video formats.

infected videos i doubt i didnt really dl anything new when the problem started and how would an inproper codec hurt me im not tring to open a particular file... but tepid my first thought once i figured out the problem was maybe i dled a corrupt file and its causeing problems but really since its started i havent really dl anything new

Actually, improper codecs or corrupt files that are not handled properly by a codec, can cause Windows Explorer to crash, because Windows Explorer needs to call the codec in order to generate a thumbnail for a video file.

If the codec crashes, either because of a bug in the codec itself, or because of a corrupt file, so does Windows Explorer.

explorer doesnt crash just eats up all the memory and i disabled the thumbnails thinking this was the problem and its still happening

Give this a try....

Thumbnail Cache - Clear and Reset

Which is the same as crashing.

As I said, it's possibly a bad codec or corrupt file not properly handled by a codec that's causing this CPU and Memory Usages issue in Windows Explorer...

Tepid had a good suggestion also of trying to rebuild the icon cache.

tried both shark 007 and the clear cache neither worked i understand that it could be an infected or currupt codec but i didnt dl anything new to the computer when it started to happen... also in media center it brings up all the thumbnails no problem without any issues

alrite so i took all my movie files from the c:\ and transfered them onto my 2tb storage drive when i go into my computer and go to the 2tb drive its labels videos anyways when i go there no memory usage problems and the thumbnails are still generated in that folder still tho with an empty my videos folder it will still eat up all the ram... keep in mind the video folder on the 2tb drive has a shortcut in the my videos folder well i used to have it as a short cut but now on 7 ive had it include the folder in view...