Not long ago I had an annoying problem with a few AVI files, on my XP Pro. I originally thought this was a media player problem, but after some research into fixes found its a bug with XP.
I had an AVI file that I couldnt rename, move or access. When I ran a 'unlocker' program on it, it was being locked by 'explorer.exe'.. :shock:
Here is the problem, Windows XP has a problem with its preview feature (that little bit that allows for thumbnails and previews when viewing a folder). Many times if you have an incomplete file, or one downloaded from a p2p system it has a damaged 'preview' information section, causing explorer to try reading the entire file bit by bit looking for the information. This can cause several symptoms; unable to delete, messege 'Access denied'; unable to rename 'Access denied'; large amount of CPU usage when accessing the folder containing these damaged AVI files; explorer crashes when accessing folder containing these damaged AVI files.
**Note** This does not always show up as damaged, many of these files play fine, sound fine. You wouldnt even notice the damage, only the XP explorer.exe seems to notice it.
Here is the fix I used and the quotes that came with the advice:
Quote from:
http://www.computing.net/cpus/wwwboard/forum/10462.htmlThe main cause I have found is actually a problem with the way explorer handles avi files! Let me explain a bit, it you have an incomplete avi file, or a damaged avi file, explorer will read it frame by frame to determine it's properties (such as video size, length etc..)
You can confirm this by starting the task manager next time it happens, I know it will takes ages to open but be patient! if you see that explorer.exe is the process using all your CPU do the following:
1. Go to Start > Run, type REGEDIT and click Ok
2. Go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler
3. Delete the "Default" value which should be "{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}"
After restarting the problem should be solved. **note** You won't have any video properties any more if you right-click and avi file, but I'm sure you never use it!
