I’ve just been called in today by one of my client because he complained that the computer sometime hangs when he opens up any folder or application. I tried duplicating the problem and I did saw how it happened. The computer doesn’t hang completely. The desktop shortcuts work as I am still able to launch programs from the shortcuts. It’s only the taskbar, start button and explorer that freezes. If I wait for few minutes(sometimes can be up to 10 minutes) for the folder/application to run, I would then be able to access the taskbar and start button.
I launched Task Manager to see which program might be causing the full load of the CPU and resulting it to hang but nothing. Everything was normal as the System Idle Process is at 80-90%. It’s easy if Task Manager shows a process is taking up all the CPU usage as I can just kill the process and it’d go back to normal. It’s quite hard to troubleshoot what’s causing this weird behavior because it’s intermittent. Sometimes opening My Documents folder would hang and sometimes don’t. There’s no 100% way to duplicate this problem.
After much searching for an answer and hours of troubleshooting, I think I might have found the answer to this problem.
Here are a list of suggestions I found that “could” solve the problem. Some might work for you and some don’t because it depends on which services or programs that causing the taskbar and explorer to hang problem. Only try the suggestions below if there are no 100% CPU usage on your Task Manager when the taskbar freezes.
1. Disable “Automatically search for network folders and printers”
– Go to Control Panel and run Folder Options. Click the View tab and uncheck “Automatically search for network folders and printers”
2. Delete any unused network Printers.
– Go to Control Panel and run Printers and Faxes. Delete any unused network Printers by using your mouse to right click and select Delete.
3. Delete automatically found network shared folders.
– Go to My Network Places and delete the found shared folders.
4. Delete mapped drives.
– Go to My Computer and delete any mapped drives.
5. Hide icons for networked UPnP devices.
– Go to My Network Places and on the left pane, click “HIDE icons for network UPnP devices“. If it says “SHOW icons for networked UPnP devices”, then it’s currently hidden. You can skip this suggested step.
6. Disable “Background Intelligent Transfer Service“.
– Go to Start -> Run and type msconfig. Click on Services tab and uncheck Background Intelligent Transfer Service to disable it.
7. Disable “SSDP Discovery Service“.
– Go to Start -> Run and type msconfig. Click on Services tab and uncheck Background Intelligent Transfer Service to disable it.
If all the 7 suggestions above still doesn’t solve your problem, use Task Manager to “End Process” any third party programs that’s running. I’ve tried all 7 steps above and none worked for me. But when I terminated a process called “Watch3.exe”, immediately the taskbar and explorer starts to respond.
You can also try disabling Startup items from “msconfig” and see which is the culprit that is causing this problem.
As you can see, there are no one solution to fix this problem as all computers are different. Different in the sense of having different software installed and configured differently. That’s why some method will work for you and some don’t.