Explorer.exe problem

Yeah be interested to see if he has Bitdefender & Mcafee on there cause thats a no no for sure, 2 AV suites running at same time causes no end of issues.

I'd hazard a guess it is most likely Windows Defender updating the definitions on MS Update.

Just wondering if its an addon to the explorer shell thats got it all tied up with its knickers in a twist. I would download Process Explorer by MS here & see what process is hugging the system down as explorer may have other sub processes under it which would show up in this little utility, that way you might be able to tie it down to something else & then use google/bing to search what that process is cooking the system as such

This utility is ****** good for svchost.exe issues, very handy.

Other things to check are, try disabling mcafee 1st to see if its conflicting at all, malware is another hugging the hell out of cpu processes, another is SP1 could be conflicting with an update, you do realise there's an SP2 now aswell, installed with no issues on number of systems, maybe installing SP2 & associated updates will fix this issue aswell.

I would also uninstall IE 8 & see if this has caused any issues during install routine, process of elimination really, remove one at a time & see if that clears the problem.

But 1st do a copy of your important files to a seperate drive, partition or external drive so you dont lose anything, I wouldnt risk leaving a copy on the machine somewhere else except different partition incase windows goes tits while playing, best option is to do an image of the machine drive as is so you'll be sure to not lose any data, use Acronis True Image trial, works very well 99.99% the time, then do the things advised by us, so no problem later finding data.

Also try to create a new user & see if it does it for that new user aswell, you can always remove that user with no issues at all, dont delete current user until done all above really as its a last resort option cause some programmes like outlook store important files within the profile that you would need again later, like pst & nk2 files which contain all your email & contacts info & nk2 file stores the remembered email addresses you've used in the TO box when sending emails, god send this file sometimes, this is why I suggest imaging the laptop rather than copying My Documents only.

I know its alot to take on but trying to give you as many options as possible to try before coming back for another option, lol.

No worries mate hope we've been of some help.