Explorer.exe High Memory & CPU usage in Windows 10

In today's release, we will cover the various known issues that can cause high memory or processor usage by your Windows file explorer. By following these instructions, you are sure you can solve your problem in Windows 10.

High memory and processor usage by Explorer.exe

The problem of high memory, disk or processor usage explorer.exe can significantly affect the performance of your Windows 10 PC. Possible troubleshooting procedures that you can try in no particular order to fix this problem are the following:

1. Run system file checker
2. Run ChkDsk
3. Run a malware scan.
4. Check the installed add-ons
5. Disable cloud clients.
6. Perform Disk Cleanup
7. Troubleshoot in clean boot state.

Now let's look at the details of the recommended solutions.

1) Run the system file checker

Run sFC / scan now and at the end, restart if the system file checker requests it. The System File Checker will restart and replace the corrupted system files if they are found.

2) Run CHKDSK

The problem of high CPU, memory and disk usage can also occur due to disk errors or corruption. In this case, you can try to solve the problem by running a ChkDsk analysis.

3) Run a malware scan

If you have this problem on your PC, run a full system virus scan. Sometimes a high explorer.exe processor usage issue can occur if your Windows 10 PC is infected with malware, which can cause some background processes to run without your knowledge, and this can cause high CPU usage on your PC.

4) Check the installed add-ons

The installed add-ons are usually the culprit! Check if you have installed helpers or add-ons on your explorer. Uninstall them or disable them. Often, even third-party shell extensions can cause Explorer to crash on particular actions. Several programs add items to the right-click context menu. To see them in detail, you can download the freeware utility ShellExView.

It will allow you to view and disable suspicious third party shell extensions. Using the trial and error method, you can disable / enable extensions to try to identify if any of them is causing a problem. ShellExView can also be used to resolve Contextual menu problems in Explorer, such as, for example, if the right click is slow.

5) Disable cloud clients

Cloud storage services such as Dropbox or OneDrive can also be the cause of this high processor usage issue with explorer.exe. These cloud services can automatically sync files in the background, which can lead to the high processor usage issue of explorer.exe.

In this case, you can try disabling OneDrive and uninstalling Dropbox temporarily and see if that fixes the problem.

6) Perform disk cleaning

The high processor usage issue by Explorer.exe can most likely be caused by old and temporary files created by Windows – and sometimes these files can interfere and clog your system.

In this case, you can run the disk cleaning tool.

7) Troubleshoot in clean boot state

The explorer.exe high processor usage issue can also occur due to third party applications running on your Windows 10 PC. Many applications and services tend to start automatically with Windows which can cause this problem and many others.

In this case, you can resolve this issue by performing a minimal boot operation. In the Clean Boot state, all apps and boot services will be disabled, which will allow you to resolve the issue manually.

I hope these solutions will help you!

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