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#1
Windows Explorer Lag & Crashes
Hello.
My PC has recently experienced both minor and major lag in Windows Explorer, e.g. when browsing files on hard drives the window will have the translucent white overlay and it becomes not responding for around 10 seconds or so, frequently. Also, sometimes the whole desktop background turns white and the programs have the white overlay too, and the taskbar crashes.
Additionally, my taskbar experiences lag too, (e.g. the glowing icons stays glowing even after when I hover it for a few seconds) and nothing is clickable at that point. These problems only started yesterday, and the whole startup process has also dragged for a minute longer than before.
This problem has been fairly annoying, as it wastes a lot of time, and most importantly the program Steam (for gaming) isn't working anymore as it gets stuck while logging in, and I'm sure it isn't because of my internet connection problems, as internet browsing works flawlessly.
I've tried configuring msconfig to start with only windows processes and nothing else, but the problem persists and I'm not sure if it is from some program or virus. I've ran a scan using Norton Internet Security, but nothing comes up as hostile. Might I add, Norton has been lagging severely too, and the anti-virus program becomes unresponsive sometimes. I have found that a process "svchost.exe" which takes up a lot of memory than usual, ranging from 100K to 250K memory, which wasn't the case a few days before. Ending the process results in Windows Explorer crashing and restarting with the basic scheme without transparent windows and taskbar, and it terminates my wireless connection as well. I have yet to try running in safe mode though.
My PC is still running other applications smoothly, such as games like Sleeping Dogs, but sometimes the entire windows freezes and nothing is operational for awhile. I am definitely sure it is not my hardware, as my computer runs i7-3770 @ 3.40GHz with 12 GB of RAM. I use Win7 Home Premium 64-bit, and it is a HP Pavilion desktop too. Please help, and thank you in advance!