hey you guys seem helpful on other blundering windows processes, can anyone tell me what i have installed or what other things might be causing explorer.exe to go on stints where it takes 100% processor cycles and begins taking up more and more memory every second? till it slows everythign on my computer down?!? help

Rtman6, you should get the Shareware tool TaskInfo 2003 at
http://www.iarsn.com/taskinfo.html, which gives you more info on your running processes than the standard MS Task-Manager. For instance, it allows you to monitor the various threads within a process (here explorer.exe).

It is difficult to say in general what causes your CPU/Memory hog. Also, what memory were you referring to? Real memory or virtual memory? Note that if virtual memory increases, it doesn't necessarily mean that explorer is taking up more physical memory.

When you've installed TaskInfo, please post us all information of your running explorer.exe. For instance, on my computer (Windows XP SP1), which has been running without reboot for 4 days, 11 hours, explorer.exe shows:
InMem KB: 15.020
Private KB: 20.260
Total KB: 112.600
Handles: 403
Windows: 64
User Obj: 114
GDI Obj: 339

The actual physical memory used is InMem KB (here 15Mb).

Greets
Alex

InMem KB: 72.344
Private KB: 70.088
Total KB: 123.196
Handles: 480
Windows: 93
User Obj: 323
GDI Obj: 486

this is durring a cpu hogging situation which usually starts right after i access my second hard drive not the one windows is on. it only has multimedia on it but its slower than it should be i think.

Rtman6 is your second harddrive connected to the onboard IDE controller? Or are you using a 3rd party IDE controller? Sometimes drivers are the cause for trouble (I once had Promise controller that made my mouse jerky every few seconds). Why don't you disconnect your 2nd drive and see if Windows behaves fine afterwards. If it does, you know where to look for the problem (try different drivers, check HDD settings, use different controller).

Also, did you make sure that your 2nd drive has DMA enabled? To check do the following:

Go to Programs | Administrative Tools | Computer Management.

Then open the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers tree the right pane and double-click on the Primary IDE (or Secondary IDE) Channel.
In the dialog that comes up, select the Advanced Options tab at the top. Under Transfer Mode select DMA if available.

I think if you are using a newer system like Win XP, this setting should already be default.

they both say transfer mode, dma if available, and then current transfer mode they both say ultra dma mode 2, i am running windows xp and its not a problem with windows, it is not hindered when i kill explorer and then restart it in the run box. It is only a problem when i open the second drive

it is a 3rd party pci uata100 tx2 promise controller, you think maybe new drivers would help?

As I said... try to physically unpluck your drive from the controller. See if Windows works fine then. This way, you can pinpoint the problem.