I could be asking a silly question, but it's bugging me a bit. Under task manager, I have three explorer.exe running at the same time. Is this normal?

Yes, you can have any number offolders open and they willall have aninstance under "processes', if you have a checkmark in "Launch Folders in a separate process", in Control Panel/Folder Options/View tab.Rating posts helps other users Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP

Launching Explorer from a shortcut that has been redirected from it's default target will also force a new process.