We continue to study Windows processes, and today we will talk about explorer.exe, this process exists in every Windows (well, except for the especially ancient ones), even in everyone’s favorite XP, although not everyone knows that such an OS once existed
So, explorer.exe is a system process and refers to the appearance of the system, and this is precisely the shell. Explorer, all the folders that you see, all folder windows and files in them, the explorer.exe shell is responsible for displaying all this, which is why if this process is completed in the manager, you will not see anything - just a black screen and that’s it (but in programs in this case it will be possible to work, they can be collapsed, at the bottom there will be their buttons where the cross/collapse is). That is, the first conclusion can already be drawn - it’s better not to disable explorer.exe in the manager!
By the way, I also wrote about explorer.exe, I looked at how to launch it and there is an example of what will happen if it is terminated, in general this is true, it may be interesting to you
So, let’s look at everything piece by piece, point by point, so to speak, to check if it’s a virus. Open the manager (right-click on the taskbar and select from the menu):
Now go to the Details tab to see a list of all processes running on your computer. So, we click on the Name column there, this is to sort all processes, so we can quickly notice two explorer.exe, if they exist:
How many do you have? I have one and you should also have one with this folder icon. Next, right-click on it and select the location from the menu:
This is so we can see where the explorer.exe process lives. And it should only be in the C:\Windows folder (not to be confused with System32) and only there, it has been there since the days of Windows XP. We look at the file, it has the following characteristics (this is a regular Windows 10 1511 build):
As you can see, it weighs 4.29 MB, look, you should have approximately the same characteristics.
Now a little about whether explorer.exe is a virus or not. If you have two such processes, then check where they are located, they should all be in the C:\Windows folder, but if one of them is in a different location, it looks suspiciously like a virus.
I’ll also write about how to restart explorer.exe - it’s very simple, in the manager itself, on the processes tab, find Explorer (this is explorer.exe) and right-click on it, where we select Restart:
So what do you think? Do you think it's a virus? If so, then look, I advise you to check your computer first with these utilities - and then again, one may just find something that the other did not find. My advice is to check the computer completely, that is, choose a full scan, it will of course take longer, but it’s better.
The second thing is to check your computer for advertising viruses. Users often see a lot of advertising in the browser, but in fact these are not native advertising on the site, but inserted by advertising viruses. And the funny thing is that regular antiviruses don’t catch them, because it’s just like unwanted software or something like that. In general, these utilities are and . All I can do is wish you good luck, friends!
21.04.2016
