I get 'Explorer.exe not responding' about every half hour

[byzantine]

Came out of nowhere. I haven't loaded anything new, just business as usual. I got a lightning strike a year ago, and had to buy a network adapter that plugs into a port, as a workaround to get past the fried network adapter card inside the computer, and I had to download some drivers for it. But that was a year ago, and this explorer.exe problem just started a week ago. I can live with it, if it doesn't get worse. I get the spinning circle when the cursor is on blank space. I then try to open some file, and I get the dialog box, and I choose 'close explorer', which makes it close and restart explorer. It's good for another half hour or more at that point. Doesn't seem to be caused by any particular action on my part. Clues welcome!

 

[byzantine]

Update : I was on for 4 consecutive hours yesterday and didn't get the explorer error even once. Don't know why.

 

[dave99]

I'd open Event Viewer to see if anything logged seems to coincide with the timing of it.

Depending on what that shows, next I'd wonder about hardware, run memtest86 for a few passes, then Prime95's Torture test to check CPU stability. Check Task Manager for anything running that doesn't look right.

Check that the storage connectors are seated well at both drives and motherboard. If you're running that Maxtor 75GB HDD, I'd seriously think about replacing it before it dies of old age which it's long overdue to have happen. If it's IDE, I'd get a cheap IDE to SATA adapter to allow running an SSD, if the mobo doesn't have SATA. Also check the motherboard and PSU for burst capacitors... lots of things can go wrong, given enough time.

 

[byzantine]

dave99, Thanks for those suggestions !