Why does my Windows XP machine's CPU usage climb to 100 percent when I right-click a file or folder within Windows Explorer?

John Savill

Windows IT Pro

InstantDoc ID #40356

Rating:

(26)

A. XP contains a known bug that causes the CPU usage to spike to 100 percent when you access the context menu under certain configurations. This bug causes file-copy operations to halt, network connections to slow, and streaming media (e.g., audio, video) to become distorted. To work around this bug, you need to disable the GUI's transition effects by performing the following steps:

Start the Control Panel Display applet.
Select the Appearance tab.
Click Effects, then clear the "Use the following transition effect for menus and tooltips" check box.
Click OK to close all dialog boxes.

Another solution that often works is to left-click the file or folder before right-clicking to display the context menu.

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k

2 years ago
May 29, 2010

if your system doesn't detect any kinda virus,worm...then please check your power adopter...it may be faulty...use cooling pads to keep your notebook cool..this has helped me to reduce CPU utilization upto 10-20%
Anonymous User

7 years ago
Aug 26, 2005

yeah. the windows classic folders did it for me. That's nuts that it happens. Hope it's fixed for SP3.
Anonymous User

7 years ago
Aug 15, 2005

I had the same problem and I've disabled all menu related effects and it seems to be fine now!
Anonymous User

7 years ago
Jun 22, 2005

Turn off transition effect as already mentioned but also use windows classic folders instead of the web folders which can cause 100% cpu usage
Anonymous User

7 years ago
Apr 06, 2005

Its caused by some sort of torjan that injects tis self into the windows "explorer.exe" your best bet is to re-format your computer

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