Explorer.exe

Been having problems with my computer: WinXP Home, SP3; 1gb RAM; 250gb HDD

For the past two months or so, I've had issues with several programs. The first issue was that Firefox (3.6) would take up to 30 minutes to load. I could click on it from the Quick Launch bar, start menu, desktop, ect, but it wouldn't load. From the task manager, I knew the process was running and consuming its normal amount of RAM, but I also saw that the process was using 0% of CPU processing time. After waiting perhaps 20 minutes, Firefox would open. (Firefox in Safe Mode took a maybe 10-15 minutes to open.) Once Firefox had been opened, however, you could completely exit the program and restart it later without a wait, so long as you didn't restart.

At first, this problem was infrequent. But after a few weeks, it got to a point where Firefox would always take ~20min to open. Then the problem spread to Thunderbird, and then to Remote Desktop Connection. At this point, I figured it was an OS problem, so I backed up all my files and reinstalled Windows from the Recovery DVD that came with my computer.

That solved the original problem of programs that wouldn't open. But after reinstalling many of my programs, explorer.exe would freeze on startup. I had to go to the Task Manager and restart it. At this point, I thought maybe WinXP was reinstalled incorrectly. (The DVD had a lot of scratches on it. It could have been misread.) So I reinstalled Windows several more times from the same disc (after I cleaned it). Each time, Windows did the same thing. I tried installing one program at a time and then restarting. Same problem, always after installing a different program.

By now, I'm pretty fed up with my computer. I reinstall Windows from an XP disc purchased from store. Installed correct drivers, and still the same problem. I'm beginning to think there could be a bad spot on the HDD. It's happened to one of my computers before.

What do you think could be the cause of my computer problems?

 

Does sound like it may be having problems reading the disk. Either run XP's chkdsk /r or download and run the disk manufacturer's disk checking utility.