Issues with explore.exe running at 100% Windows 7.

from Stardock Forums

 I have recently downloaded and installed a trial version of Dreamscapes, and not had any problems or issues with it spiking my CPU until I attempted to try to update during my trail period version, after thinking that I could get a newer version of Deskscapes threw Impulse, I started experiencing some issues with the program locking up, while trying different backgrounds. Never the less what the heck, I just thought Deskscapes was is in need of an update, and so I was just about concider purchasing Deskscapes just to get the updated version, when I noticed my CPU was running steady at 100%. I also began experiencing another issue, with my computer crashing, so I started to debug the situation going all the way as to reinstalling Windows 7 threw the upgrade process, of course, and having had done so I still noticed that it did not resolved my situation. Note: if you ever searched the internet about "Why is explore.exe running at 100%" to find a hole lot of nothing really, but how to remove a bunch of differant Reg files only by deletetion, well I was not happy with having to go threw this process so I just did an upgrade hoping it would fix the problem, and so with a hole lota effort to find a correction I could not find the right fix to the problem, so the only thing I could think of next was to start to uninstall programs, then there it was, it was sitting right in front of me Deskscapes, and low and behold my CPU settled back down to normal, "GOOD", then I went again with a clean download but forgot to clean up my Registry of any old settings of Deskscapes, oops, anyway, "My Bad", I know what you are thinking it probably has somthing to do with his Registry, any how when I reinstalled Deskscapes it happened again, so I figured to try some fixes by trying to adjust some settings with the program, also changing out differant backgrounds which seemed to help, but being not the background I wanted to have...

 So I am left with searching Stardock Forum for some answers, first let me ask "What gives!" what are some suggestions, and then lets say if I purchase a copy of Deskscapes and get the abilty to upgrade and get something more than just the basic free download version, do you think this would resolve my CPU issue? or will this continue, because I don't want something the produces this effect, you know.

Cheers?

deskscapes
26,825 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Does it only happen when you have a dream running, or even when you disable Deskscapes (but not uninstall)

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

I tried to disable could not find looked in msconfig, but maybe not hard enough.

So I would have to say yes.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

By 'disable' I think he means just displaying a wallpaper, instead of a video or dream.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

To This answer too is Yes.

I also tried that, and second I found when Deamscapes failed one time to load and work correctly (meaning no visual movement form the wallpaper) that it ran at nomal Cpu usage.

The only other option I had was to uninstall...

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

I'd like to confirm, I had the same issue in 32 bit windows 7.

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Neil, reply 6
Do you have fences installed too?

 

Same issue for me and yes I have fences installed.

 

Update: Fences uninstalled, it's still not working better. (for me CPU 100% and explorer.exe 50%)

2GHz dual core CPU, 4 GB RAM, NVidea Geforce 9500 M GS Windows 7 32 bit running DeskScapes demo

Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting ChaosKiller, reply 7



Quoting Neil Banfield,
reply 6
Do you have fences installed too?



 

Same issue for me and yes I have fences installed.

 

Update: Fences uninstalled, it's still not working better. (for me CPU 100% and explorer.exe 50%)

2GHz dual core CPU, 4 GB RAM, NVidea Geforce 9500 M GS Windows 7 32 bit running DeskScapes demo

What is using the other 50%?

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

It was mainly Media Player Classic playing a HD film at that moment. I've reinstalled DeskScapes again and I think I know what the problem is. It seems it's the MPEG-2 codec which doesn't do it's work well. When I use a slideshow or hybrid it works perfectly but at the moment MPEG-2 makes explorer.exe go to 20-40%CPU. I've tried another MPEG-2 codec (Stinky's MPEG-2 Codec 1.2.0.79).

If anyone knows a better codec I'm willing to try.

Update: explorer was 50% because it was assigned to 1 core only. near 100% on 2 cores!

Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top

im on a win 7 64x and i runn all i the dreams fine, they use about half my ram but, besides that.

also if it eats to much check if your running any effects, it sems to be real time rendering, in my chase it eats half of my 2.4 quad phennom.

btw. i think it's a good idear to have 3gb or more so it dosn't have to re-render the graphics constantly

i have a 8800gt, 4 gb ram and a 2.4 amd quad

so it might be because of my high specs i run it so smoth

Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I can confirm that for some reason dreams now take 60-70% explorer.exe CPU (I'm using PhotoDream) when they used to take only 30% or so and I believe it used to show up in task manager as using dwm.exe.   I'm on Windows 7 64 as well.

I noticed this happening when I turned on the multiple GPUs and scaling advanced options.  Explorer was hitting 120% CPU (I'm on a quad core so that's 30% of each).  So I turned it off to test and it went down to 60%.  

I don't mind the CPU hit, I can "afford" it on this machine, but something is odd compared to before.  It's also stuttering, which is something I've never seen in Dreams before.

Note that this hit affects video (mpg2) dreams as well as PhotoDream, etc.  Ovals seems to be back down to 30%+ but I believe Ovals used to use almost no CPU before.

Note that mine is an extreme case as I am running this on dual 30" monitors.

PS Video dreams never work on my third monitor, display adapter 2, even with the Enable mm support advanced option enabled.  Dynamic Dreams do work, however.

 

 

Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top

To help aid in the comparisons, I have Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit with the following hardware and DeskScapes hardly uses any CPU or ram.

With the system at idle with DeskScapes running, the most usage I've seen is on a mpeg video dream and it's around 2% on each of my 4 cores and my ram runs at 25% usage. The Dynamic Dreams run at 2% usage on 1 core. I am running 1 monitor.

Intel Quad Core 9550 (2.86mhz)

8 GB ram

Nvidia GTX 260 SC video card

 

Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top

CarGuy, good notes...

Mine is Quad Core Intel, 8gb ram, nvidia 295 (non SLI), W7ultimate64.  The only real difference between us is that my machine is Multi-Monitor...and the new code was added for Multi-Monitor configurations.

I just checked this on other single monitor systems and both Vista 64 ultimate and Windows 7 64 Ultimate are running at like 3% CPU (so total 12% ish) with PhotoDream or Video, etc.

Is anyone else running multiple monitors?  Is that the missing link?  

PS I do have Fences Pro installed.  Fences running only on primary monitor 1 at this time.  I did a test turning Fences on/off from the Tools panel and saw no change in explorer.exe CPU usage.

Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Fascinating development.  I did a test where I disabled my third monitor, which was on the second card of a nvidia 295.  So now, one card serving two 30" monitors...other card doing nothing.

And lo and behold the CPU% went down to 8% and it is tagged as dwm.exe again...like it used to be.

I suspect that something about the new Deskscapes multimonitor/scaling code is causing a huge hiccup that exists whether or not those options are turned on in the settings.  And that hiccup has something to do with explorer.exe.

I hope this helps.  It sure made a huge difference to me.

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Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The new beta solved these issues for me completely.  

As long as I create three versions of Photodream (just by copying and renaming), and then assigning each one to a different monitor, there is no explorer.exe performance hit, etc. etc.   \

My dwm.exe use is 10%-ish with three complete dreams playing on 30", 30", and 24" monitors.  8))))))