I am having the seeming common problem of Widows Explorer not responding. I have tried autoruns and turned off everything recommended. I have run sfc /scannow 3 times and it comes back clean. Booting in safe mode it appears to work. I read somewhere that the problem could be a service program, but can't remember where I read it or how to do it. Something about turning off all service programs and then turning them back on one at a time. The problem is I don't remember what it said to do.
I have an HP desktop with these specifications
AMD quad core processor 1.8ghz
1TB and 500GB SATA hard drives
Nvidia 8400 graphics card
a 2mb internet connetion
wireless
2 BD RW drives
Windows 7
Best Answer
I would look for and disable un-needed Windows Explorer add-ins using ShellExView by NirSoft.
Only disable non-microsoft extensions. There may be some extensions that are providing functionality you want, or it might all just be slowing you down. You'll have to experiment a bit to find out if a shell extension is the issue.