Freshly installed Windows7 Pro 64bit, Windows Explorer problems

coyote455 · 15 Aug 2016

Hi!

I've just bough a new (new for me) laptop, and apart from this problem, it WOULD BE absolutely perfecf in every aspect.

I took out the original Seagate HDD, and snapped in my 840 EVO SSD. I reinstalled windows 7 (from DVD), no problems.
But when I tried to cut and paste a few gigs of videos, Windows Explorer just "freezed". The cut process stops at a certain point, and even after 30 mins, it's just stuck. I had to cancel the process (knowing it might damage the video files) and had to do it again and again till I succeeded.
When I open a folder, I see the green loading bar at navigation panel, which NEVER completes. It needs a few minutes to reach the end, ALMOST, but it's just stuck at the end and never completes.

Then I notice a process in the task manager, DLLHOST.EXE, which takes up about 50% of CPU power and obviously the whole system performance bogs down a bit because of this. When this happens, I usually manually kill the dllhost.exe and then everything gest back to normal.
It might be worth mentioning, that this dllhost process only starts causing problems if I open ONE CERTAIN folder. Can it be due to one (or more) problematic video?
Also, a few days ago I had the same problem with explorer.exe, it took up about 50% os CPU power and I cannot even kill that process, obviously.

My question is, WHY? I was thinking it might be my SSD (which is about 3,5yrs old), according to HD Sentinel, the performace (percentage) drops by 1-2% every single day since installation. It's 92 now.

Does any of you have an idea about what causes this?

ThrashZone · 15 Aug 2016

Hi,
Have you fully updated the new install yet ?
Possibly svchost.exe is soaking up resources ?
When manually installing updates you need to switch your update settings to Never check for updates and restart the machine first.

Make sure KB3020369 is installed if not manually install it this is the main article page with all versions,
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3020369
These other links do prompt you to download as soon as you click on them just to give you a heads up :)
Win-7 32 bit
https://download.microsoft.com/downl...020369-x86.msu
Win-7 64 bit
https://download.microsoft.com/downl...020369-x64.msu

Then manually install KB3172605 main article page with all versions,
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3172605
KB3172605
Win-7 32 bit
https://download.microsoft.com/downl...172605-x86.msu

Win-7 64 bit
https://download.microsoft.com/downl...172605-x64.msu

After switch your windows update settings back to what you had prior and manually check for updates and the rest should show up shortly.

coyote455 · 15 Aug 2016

Hi!

Actually, I haven't installed any updates yet. This freaking Windows Update is the other major problem.
Last time I left the laptop on idle for 5 hours to give time to Windows Update..I came back to see that it's still stuck at searching!

Yes, I frequently see one scvhost.exe process (even though I set update to "search for updates but let me decide whether to download and install them") that takes up almost 1.5Gb or RAM. I also kill that manually every time, and then no problem again.

I also tried this WSUS offline stuff, it managed to download everything, but then I got an error message right before attempting to install them..

ThrashZone · 15 Aug 2016

Hi
Try the process I posed
This time be sure to Exclude Recommended updates from being mixed into and installing with the real Important updates
Then only load the Important updates first.
After create a system image and deal with the recommended update so you have a way to restore the system if you get errors....
Imaging with free Macrium

Freshly installed Windows7 Pro 64bit, Windows Explorer problems-update-settings.jpg

Callender · 15 Aug 2016

See this post: Windows Explorer Crashing a Lot

Also check "MediaPreview" software mentioned here: Where are the Most Recently Used Lists?

TDKMate said:

I tried out Media Preview anyway. And guess what? Besides seemingly working good, it allows Explorer to show thumbnails for .flv files. And I quickly discovered that it doesn't build a thumbnail for a corrupt file! It turns out I had a lot of corrupt .flv files!
.

So basically try installing MediaPreview and see if it will create video thumbnails. If thumbnails are missing for videos they may well be corrupt and cause Explorer issues. Another option: Remove those video files by placing them on an external drive and disconnect the drive. Reboot and see if the issue is resolved.

You can get the same issue with corrupt image files.

coyote455 · 16 Aug 2016

@ThrashZone: Thanks, I'm gonna try it!

@Callender: Reading your comment I realized that I have one certain folder where I noticed missing thumbnails!
I'm gonna try moving the whole folder on my pendrive and see if explorer.exe still causing CPU throttling.

ThrashZone · 16 Aug 2016

Hi,
Along with the 2 already updates I mentioned you could also install this updates rollup KB3125574
You have to get it at the catalog using internet explorer though
Microsoft Update Catalog