This 'feature' is highly irritating and was clearly designed with the all-too-common "every computer is connected to the internet" mindset. The Games Explorer in Windows 7 has been causing me grief for quite some time, although I've only recently discovered that it was the cause. The problem manifests it'self like so: When I try to launch a game (a third party game, like UT2004), only the game's process appears in task manager - the app it'self fails to open. However, the rundll32 process appears, and proceeds to use 50% of the CPU for absolutely nothing. When I try to launch the game a second time, it actually launches correctly, but now there are two of the same process in task manager, and rundll32 is still swamping the CPU. All this is due to Windows 7's games explorer trying to download cover art and info about the game with which to furnish it's worthless 'Games' folder. It's failing, because the PC does not have a permanent internet connection. Even though I have configured it to NOT "Download art and information about the games on your computer", I've noticed that it still does it anyway. So could someone please enlighten me; I want to disable the Games Explorer and all it's processes and/or services.

I don't think there's a way to completely turn it off. I recommand to you to proceed by a repair operation for your windows 7 OS and check if the problem is solved or not. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

My particular installation is not broken. This issue is a bug in Games Explorer that Microsoft have not bothered to fix yet: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistagaming/thread/797b227c-3dca-439b-995f-b179bac7e347 http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/887850-removing-games-explorer/ http://www.sevenforums.com/software/97818-games-rundll32-issue.html http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1051957&sid=8adec73cfd26b08ce1077945e69d52fa I'm going to try Server 2008 R2, as I'm sure that won't include Games Explorer.