Using Build 7100 of Windows 7 on a Dell Studio 1737 dual core 2.66Ghz with 4GB of RAM and ATI Mobility Radeon 3650, occasionally the windows explorer functionality becomes almost non functional. Can perform a few basic tasks, but cannot do anything of much value until the computer is power-cycled. This bug is possibly related to when the computer comes out of hibernation. Still trying to determine exactly how to repeat this bug. But it has happened to me between 5-10 times at a frequency of about every few days. The following is a list of behaviors of Windows 7 when this bug occurs and they all occur together: 1. No taskbar buttons will work 2. Cannot load the task manager from the taskbar, (a windows popup will appear saying that it can't find the program at the address) 3. Task manager can however be accessed via Ctrl-Shift-Esc 4. The program files are missing from the start menu. The area where the programs should be listed is totally white. 5. Can only access browser windows and other window shells that were previously opened, prior to hibernation. 6. If a program is open and you try to perform a "save as", I can't remember the exact wording but, Windows sometimes gives a message indicating insufficient memory to perform the save, however there is actually plenty of memory and disk space. 6. Right clicking on an application or exe file, the "Open" option is not even present 7. When, right clicking on the desktop the "screen resolution", "gadgets", and "personalize" options are entirely missing 8. CPU usage is at or above 50% (The next time this bug occurs I will check which process is the hog) 9. Sometimes when this bug occurs the shutdown text is missing on the shutdown button within the startmenu. The button is instead purely transparent. 10. My only known workaround at this point is a hard shutdown by holding in the power button for 5 seconds. I will post more details as I get them as I'm sure I will get this bug again sometime soon. I will attempt to acquire some screenshots. This would be a serious blow to microsoft should a bug of this magnitude make it into the manfacturing release.

I never enable hibernation or standby because I've never had any luck with them in any version of Windows. I just turn off monitor or shut down system as needed. I call that my redneck power management solution. I sell used computers and do that to them too. ALSO- You didn't say if you are using 32 or 64 bit Windows. Looks like 64 would be best for your system with 4gb RAM. What OS did the Dell come with?

It would only be a bug if it effected hardware across the board, and as I have installed RC1 on everything from a EPIA 800 to a brand new dell T7500 (12 plus installs so far)without a single power management issue other than a brief time when my wireless failed on return from hibernation, but that was fixed in a update.You really need to look at your hardware / driversas that is where the probelm would be.I am dual booting on a few and use hibernation on the win7 without issue.

Thomas, Hibernation seems to be broken in the Windows 7 RC for many users. It's been established that explorer.exe is not "waking up" properly when these problems occur, and the most successful workaround to date involve restarting the Explorer process, either by logging off and then back on again, or killing and restarting a new instance of explorer.exe from the Task Manager.-Alex

I had this issue and it was bugging me for a while. I have the same system and spec as you describe intially and it was occuring in both x64 and x32 systems with latest dell drivers and bios. I found that swiching the power scheme to High Performance resolved the issues with explorer hanging when you try to access the cd/dvd/bd drive. There are quite a few other posts around the internet which mention this issue. Incidently it seems dell will be offering windows 7 upgrades on the 1737 model so hopefully if it is some driver issue, it will be resolved by October. elyoh

I'm experiencing the same problem - looks like it's due to how windows 7 deals with memory. I've got 4 GB of Ram running on a Lenovo x61. Eventhough I have free physical memory avail everytime i have the problem Explorer.exestarts to take likearound 500 mb+ of of memory. And I notice that even if I'm not doing anythiing much in particular this keeps rising. from like 17 mb and after like 5 mins to 50 mb...Killing explorer and starting a new instance brings back full functionality.Any patches - any diagnostics we can run to more details on the memory issue and explorer...