Help! : explorer.exe high cpu usage ; invalid time stamp error

incognita · #1 06-01-2005, 02:11 AM

Hi,
I'm having a problem when i start up my comp. after logging into my user account, the monitor sorta "blinks" periodically.. as in, the wallpaper is there, but all the icons disappear. However, as soon as i open Norton Antivirus , the problem stopped (until the next time i restart the computer and log on).

On loggin in, I checked the cpu usage with taskmgr, and foud that it was goin pretty high (jumping frm 10%to 60% or 80%).. when i checked out the running processes, "EXPLORER.EXE" was taking up around 95% or so. i searched for the file explorer.exe, and got 3 results:
explorer.exe in C:\Windows
EXPLORER.EXE-082F38A9.pf in C:\Windows\Prefetch
and eplorer.exe in C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386

All these seem to be normal, if i'm not wrong. (?).

anyway, i ended the process explorer.exe, and on doing so, all the icons disppeared, and i was left with the wallpaper staring back at me. Hence i had to restart, and on running Scandisk, as it was scanning the files, ALL the files in my C drive had "Invalid Time Stamp" written next to it. Nothing seemed to be done to rectify the problem.

The only other problem with my computer of late, was when i was trying to uninstall jdk1.4.2_08 so that i could upgrade to the 1.5 version, and it kept giving the error "internal error 2869" and "fatal error in installatin of java". But i guess that's completely unrelated to this?

Could somone pleeease help me out with this?
IF it were due to some virus/trojan, would the problem be solved if i just restored the system to a previous state???

covertsonic · #2 07-18-2005, 12:49 PM

I have the exact same problem. I have done the usual google search, and most people are saying that it is spyware related and are recomending using several different antispyware tools.

I use windows antispyware, but apparently (if spyware is the culprit) it is not good enough.

You said you have to restart your computer.... You do not have to. After you close the explorer.exe process, simply go up to file -> new task -> explorer.exe and then, you should be good to go.

That worked fine on my WinXP Media Center.

I will be downloading various antispyware tools to combat this. I hope this helps.