Explorer.exe running CPU cores at ~50%

[RichS]

I'm having a problem with my main computer.

Windows 7 Pro, Intel Core 2 Duo 3 GHz. , Intel P35 m/b, nVidia 9800GT OC graphics.

Runs fine on bootup, whole system at idle is around 1-4% CPU utilization, unless I let the machine set over 10 minutes - it's set to power down the monitor but not the system.

When I wake up the monitor, explorer.exe is running around 50% of my processing power. Only way to get it back to normal is to log out and back in.

I think it may be 2 possibilities - one is that I just recently upgraded my Avast Free antivirus to version 5, so that could be the problem. The other is that my Enermax Liberty 620W PSU went out, and I had to make due with a generic 600W unit until tax time. I've had some USB power problems with the machine since - I don't think that this PSU has enough juice to run the system.

System is clean from viruses/malware, all Windows Updates done. I'll try uninstalling the Avast software and see what happens - if that doesn't work, I think I'm on the right track with the power, but I'd like to know what else I could check.

Thanks beforehand for any suggestions!

[Broomjockey]

Avast? Got it set to do anything while idle? I just installed that myself, and there's a few settings you can do to run while idle. Other things run like that as well. Indexing, Windows Defender scans, etc. If it's specifically explorer.exe doing it, I'd lean towards indexing and similar.

[Cazzi]

Could always run taskmgr.exe or download Process Explorer from Windows Sysinternals to see what processes are running at the time.
Although I'd probably go with what Broomjockey says too

[RichS]

If it's specifically explorer.exe doing it, I'd lean towards indexing and similar.

Looks like that was it.

I found out that it seemed to happen not only reviving the monitor, but just running the computer for awhile. I ended up doing different things after getting my assignments done last night - uninstalling Avast, shutting down startup and services using msconfig, etc.

Started again this morning, and came up on a post that said that a corrupted file could be the problem - and that was sort-of it.

Turns out that whenever I opened the Games folder is when explorer.exe would jump up. The problem was in the process of moving game shortcuts from the desktop to the folder, the Steam shortcut thumbnail got corrupted, so whenever I would open the folder, explorer.exe went nuts trying to open the shortcut thumbnail.

It's been over an hour since I deleted the shortcut from the folder, and everything's behaving. I'm going to let it shut down the monitor and see if it's totally fixed.

Again, thanks for the advice!