I noticed that the CPU usage of Explorer, and to be more specific: the thread shlwapi.dll, could slow your system down quite a bit, especially if you’re computer isn’t quite state-of-the-art. That’s why I began my investigation.

It appears that shlwapi.dll is (among other things) the search engine for the Start-menu search bar. I personally use it as Run-bar, but you could use it for finding documents too. But, after you’ve closed your Start menu, shlwapi.dll keeps searching for your query on your system. If your latest defragmentation was some time ago, this kills your system.

How do you solve this? Well, right-click on the Windows bulb. Select ‘Properties’ and go to ‘Start Menu’. Click ‘Customize…’ and then find the option ‘Search files’. Check the option ‘Don’t search for files’ and click on ‘OK’ in all dialogs.

If you’ve done everything well, this fixed your CPU leakage.

This post appeared earlier in reduced form and in Dutch on my previous weblog.