What is explorer.exe?

i was doing some looking around and i opened a folder in my documents called new folder in it was eXplorer.exe spelled exactly that way eXplorer.exe(capitol X). it also had a funny looking symbol beside it (a red one )i then did a scan on it with avg anti virus and found it to be malware. the only explorer.exe file you should have should be in your windows folder but fake explorer.exe programs will hide in other folders and be hard to detect by anti virus programs so do some custom searching. good luck!

Hi there,

Explorer.exe is a heuristic reserved name. It can be a valid Windows file (a file manager application that allows you to "explore" trough your files and manages the displayed windows -together with dwm.exe in Vista and later- and other processes) or any random application.

Note that I sometimes rename a disinfect tool (combofix, for example) to iexplore in order to trick the virus into not blocking it.

Generally, most AV solutions will quarantine or delete any explorer.exe file located elsewhere than C:\Windows.

Cheers!

Explorer (service into Windows Operational System) is identified as explorer.exe and is located into C:\WINDOWS folder. Another file, identified as explorer.exe is found into C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache. Both of them are 1.012 KB and those modification dates must be compatible with other install files into your Windows version.
Any other file identified in a different way or in a different folder, must be faced as infected file that can put your system in danger. Use a reliable AV, as BG is, and scan your machine using the complete verification.
In addition you can use an antimalware tool, like MalwareBytes, and scan your machine looking for possible malwares.