Microsoft released an update for Windows 7 today: KB980408: The April 2010 stability and reliability update for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is available. The update fixes, among other things: Windows Explorer may stop responding for 30 seconds when a file or a directory is created or renamed after certain applications are installed. i'm not experiencing it on my own Windows 7 machine, but two colleagues at work were experiencing the problem. i would really like to know what applications were causing problems. Microsoft will never call out the misbehaving applications. i want to know what software i should be ridiculing and insulting. And avoid in the future. Did anyone who was experiencing this problem isolate the applications?