Win Explorer runaway

I have a new Gateway dual core, 1GB, WinXP Media Edition pile of junk. After booting up, it it becomes mostly unusable within a couple of hours due to Win Explorer gobbling up more than 50% of CPU resources. Re-booting calms the beast down for another couple of hours. After customer support could not resolve my problem, I painstakingly re-formatted and re-installed Win XP. The same problem returned. Please note that this is not due to a virus, adware or other nasty. Also note that it is not due to a corrupt .AVI file. The few I have are stored on a separate disc, play good, and not accessed when the problem occurs. I tried using a windows explorer replacement, but can't access my desktop or other programs.

 

Hello,
You probably have a conflict between some software. What did you install after format?
Mrk

 

After formatting, I installed & updated AVG, Zonealarm, Adaware, Spywareblaster, Win Defender, and Spybot. I have used these programs for a long time with no problems (that I know of).

 

I assume you are referring to un-usual disk activity.

Any chance you installed one of these new desktop search tools which enable you to find things quickly? Perhaps you have a program which is trying to continually update its index. Are you connected to the internet when this occurs?

One start would be to disable all of those in use and selectively start one at a time and keep trying various ones until you can isolate which program is causing the activity.