Explorer.exe Freezes up when browsing drives

Not sure if this is the appropriate section to post this in, if it needs to be moved that's fine. My problem is we have several HP tablet PCs all but one of them out of 5 will randomly freeze while browsing drives. In task manager explorer.exe is at 50 percent and the pc locks up. Is there any software I can use to determine where the conflict is? I have done a reformat of one of them and updated drivers, the problem is still there but not as bad. I also replaced the hard drive before the format. All scans with KAV, SAS and Dr Web come up clean. I almost forgot, I am running XP. Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

Hi Divedog,

Electrical's clear and not the mouse, is she hooked up on a separate psu that could be temporarily swapped?
The tablet oversight leave's me temporarily without a follow-up.


GF

 

4 of the 5 are having this problem. They are HP tablet pcs so I don't know about changing the PSU, it happens even if unhooked from the network and on battery power. It usually happens when accessing a drive that contains mapping software, ESRI but the freeze happens as soon as you open the drive, before you try to access the software or data on the drive. What I can't figure out is whats different about the one that is working properly. Any other PC I have the same mapping data on runs fine with it.

 

do the drives have avi files?

 

I doubt the one that was formated 2 days ago has any AVI files on it. What do you guys know about prefetch? if I click the Arc Reader icon from the shortcut on the desktop no problem but if you open the folder on the C drive that the data and icon is in it will freeze even before you click the icon if that makes any sense.

 

Doesn't sound like a prefetch problem. Usually when the system slows down, it's some kind of memory leak or scanners going berserk. Plz provide more information i.e, under what circumstance does your problem occur and when it does work, what is the environment at the time?

 

Usually when accessing a folder that has ESRI Arc Reader published maps and a geo database in it, the freeze occurs before actually clicking anything in the folder but rather as soon as the folder is opened. It does happen other times randomly and less often when accessing other info, it just seems to happen allot when accessing that particular file. Remember this is happening on 4 of 5 identical HP tablet pcs running XP. What I was hoping for is some software that can spot software conflicts or at least tell me what is freezing explorer.exe.

 

You could try unticking "Automatically search for...." in Folder Options to see if it helps?

Quite easy to undo if needed.

 

I found this on google I will try it and report back tomorrow.
http://www.softwaretipsandtricks.com/forum/windows-xp/22902-explorer-exe-freezes.html

 

As four of your five laptops have the same problem-this would indicate a common link-that ESRI Arc Reader is resources intensive,probably overloading the available memory.

Download a memory indicator and see if all the RAM is being used, which would cause the freeze-if so double the RAM in all the machines.

If you cant Google one -I am using TclockEx,-which has a memory bar always on display in the taskbar.

If the bar extends to the extreme right-time for more memory

 

Should the condition persist following file checker, what do you make of the comment's exchanged here?

Perhap's the difference between boxes; a dll version mismatch? Your version of the reader?
Assuming an esri file, dump loaded module's using listdlls -r pid (process id in tm).

*Dealing with many esri dll's? Running sigcheck against a given directory will quickly provide version info.
Should you dwnld, save'em to your system32 folder, open a shell and pipe the output as a text file.

The question is; Which file deliver's the instruction to open the folder? An improperly written dll?
Filemon or Rohitab's api monitor could reveal the offender (the latter of which I'm unfamiliar).

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There's no shortage of utilities for sorting application memory leak's. One example, another, the "user-mode dump heap utility," and windowsbbs "dump data collection tool." Your best bet may be enlisting the advice of the this last entry should resolution effort's exceed an acceptable time-frame.


GF

 

Good stuff, Thanks to everyone for all the ideas, I am still working on it, I will report back when I know more.

 

GlobalForce, Thanx so much for the above post, it turns out that changing the folder properties that contain the PMFs to picture as suggested in the above forum at ESRI that you posted is indeed the fix. The lockup seems to occur because windows is trying to make a thumbnail of the PMF even before you click on it. I would like to thank everyone for there suggestions.

 

WHAT!? You mean, it's already over? We may have to wait WEEK'S for another lively candidate!
Seriously though, good for you the solution hunt didn't last long. Back to business then!

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ArcReader Discussion Conference Followup - Mark Bockenhauer, ESRI
*What to _oogle should the link become broken - .pmf files hang Windows Explorer


GF

 

Could one of the mods change the title of this thread to ArcReader freezes up explorer.exe so it can be found by someone doing a search in the future. Thanx again for the help.