I'm running Windows 81. on yoga 13. i5 processor with 4GB RAM.

Using search charm on everywhere or settings the Explorer process spike to load 100% of cpu, The system is unresponsive to keys, mouse movements become slow and jittery.

Windows upgraded via Windows Store.

Already tried to recover the Lenovo initial image and applied all updates, the issue still occur.

Thanks

Install the WPT (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4847.install-the-windows-performance-toolkit-wpt.aspx , open a cmd prompt with admin rights and run this command for 60s:

xperf -on latency -stackwalk profile -buffersize 1024 -MaxFile 256 -FileMode Circular && timeout -1 && xperf -d cpuusage.etl

press a key to stop logging. Zip and upload the file to your skydrive and post a link here (post a link without http or replace http with hxxp if you still can't insert a full link)

I seem to have the same problem as Leonardo. I'm using the final version of Windows 8.1 Pro (installed Oct 17th), while running in "clean boot" mode:

As soon as I use the search charm (only on "Everything", "Files" or "Settings"), explorer.exe causes the CPU usage to spike at 100%. It will stay up there until the search charm does eventually find its results (after 5-30 seconds or so..). As soon as the results show up, CPU usage gradually drops back to a normal level.

Note that this only applies if you don't do anything in the Search charm while you wait for the results.. If you do type something while it's already searching, CPU usage can permanently stay at 100%, even after the results are found.

I also ran the xperf command (see this cpuusage.etl trace: hxxp://sdrv.ms/Ha5AtU ) and it seems to indicate that something is wrong in the SearchFolder.dll file.. (as you can see this screenshot: hxxp://sdrv.ms/Ha5vq5 )

Kind regards,

 Tim

xperf -on latency+FILENAME+FILE_IO+FILE_IO_INIT -stackwalk profile+FileCreate+FileCleanup+FileClose+FileRead+FileWrite+FileSetInformation+FileDelete+FileRename -buffersize 1024 -MaxFile 512 -FileMode Circular -f kernel.etl
xperf -start UserLogger -on Microsoft-Windows-Immersive-Shell:0xffffffffffffffff:0xff:'stack'+Microsoft-Windows-WindowsUIImmersive:0xffffffffffffffff:0xff:'stack'+Microsoft-Windows-Search-Core:0xffffffffffffffff:0xff:'stack'+Microsoft-Windows-Search:0xffffffffffffffff:0xff:'stack'+Microsoft-Windows-UI-Search:0xffffffffffffffff:0xff:'stack'  -BufferSize 1024 -f USER.etl

echo At this point, the test pass should be performed.

pause


Xperf -stop
Xperf -stop USERLogger
Xperf -merge USER.etl kernel.etl Result.etl

del USER.etl
del kernel.etl

zip and upload the result.etl

Here's my zipped Result.etl trace, with FileIO activity:

http://sdrv.ms/17av1IH

Perhaps interesting to note: I now changed my Library folders such that they're all completely empty. (as suggested in the related "Search charm is slow" thread..) The search charm now works properly if it's set to "Files"; it works sufficiently fast and responsive, and CPU usage remains normal while using the charm. However, the 100% CPU usage problem still persists if the the charm is set to either "Everything" or "Settings". (In my Result.etl trace, the charm was set to "Everything"..)

Kind regards,
 Tim

I have the exact same problems: explorer.exe's CPU usage spikes to 100% whenever I try searching for anything using the charm, even the simplest search results take at least 3-4 seconds to appear if they appear at all, the entire system is slow and unresponsive while search is running and no amount of tinkering with the indexing settings or libraries helps.

parsing XML files is slow for you and Tim

msxml6.dll!Reader::Parse


ok, I looked at the filenames and saw that the adressbook of the mail app is accessed. so looks like parsing those .appcontent-ms data causes it.

http://lunarfrog.com/blog/2013/08/16/windows81-contentindex/

I have now included the "AppData" directory of the user account into the "indexing options". Now it is really fast. Please try it out and say here, if you see any improvements.

Cheers mystacor

• Edited by mystacor Monday, October 21, 2013 9:22 AM
• Proposed as answer by Kate LiMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Tuesday, October 22, 2013 2:58 PM

Aha, I think I've got it figured out! I checked my PC at work (which should be a fairly default Win8 installation) to see which folders were included in its indexing options. I applied the same indexing options to my Win8.1 installation at home and the problem vanished! The search charm now always is snappy and responsive, and CPU usage is normal.

Here's what I did: (Note that my explanation might be a bit off since I've got a Dutch Windows installation, so I can only guess what everything is called in English..)

1. Ensure hidden files are shown (Open a file explorer window > View > Check "Hidden items")
2. Go to your Control Panel > Indexing Options
3. Click the Modify button
4. Check the following two folders to add them to the index:
   - C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Menu Start
   - C:\Users
5. Uncheck the following folders (or more..) to exclude them (from C:\Users)
   - C:\Users\Administrator\AppData
   - C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData
   - (Just so I wouldn't have to wait too much, I also unchecked a bunch of folders I knew contained a ton of files .. e.g. Documents)
6. Finally (and I suspect this one does the trick), check the following folder to re-include it:
   - C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail
7. Click OK and wait for the indexer to chug along until it has finished updating the index. (Took a couple minutes for me, and my index now contains about 3000 items..)
8. Go ahead and try out the search charm; hopefully yours now is nice and snappy as well :)

Thanks Andre and mystacor for pointing me in the right direction!

Kind regards,
 Tim

• Proposed as answer by Kate LiMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Tuesday, October 22, 2013 2:58 PM

Thanks Andre and mystacor for pointing me in the right direction!

It does not help me. Except for Files and Settings, search Everywhere sets the explorer to 99% CPU forever.

I excluded nearly all locations in my user folder and all locations outside it. The index though shows about 40,000 items after rebuild though.

There are still libraries with a lot of documents but they are not included in the search locations but files still come from them.

There were no problems before 8.1 update with my large files collection

capture a trace with the FILEIO data, so that I can see which files are

I had this same problem, it seems to be caused by the system slooowly looking through folders that are not (yet) in the index, in my case folder folders that were in Libraries that I didn't know I still had. Additional symptoms, Win 8.1 kept adding back (some of?) those folders to my search locations after I removed them.

Solutions at the link below, for me nhkhanh's suggestion did the trick:

http://superuser.com/questions/666787/windows-8-1-search-charm-slow-with-explorer-exe-cpu-usage-at-100