Explorer Problem, please help if you can

Scenario: I start my computer up and operate programs with no problem.
I use Windows Explorer OR Internet Explorer.
Now, every 3 seconds, the cursor becomes the hourglass. I timed it. It does this until I reboot.
When it does this, most programs still work, but become sluggish or jerky.
In IE, I try to type a URL and every three seconds, there's the hourglass cursor, and whatever I've typed in the URL field disappears, as though the screen (explorer?) is resetting. The same results would happen if someone was pressing the F5 (Reset) key every three seconds while you're trying to fill in a form field.

What I have tried to do to resolve the problem:
1. Ran Ad-Aware and Spybot to check for 'hijackware' or variations. Some tracking objects found and cleaned. Problem still persists.
2. Ran Mcafee, Norton, and Trend Micro antivirus programs. No problems found.
3. Opened Add/Remove programs and selected FIX IE function.
4. Used regedit /fix (from DOS)
5. Uninstalled the last three programs I installed just before this problem started.

 

Here are all the things I can think of this early in the morning:

If you haven't updated both AdAware and Spybot recently, do that and run them again.

Look in task manager and start shutting things down one by one, giving enough time in between each to see if the problem goes away.

Look in Control Panel to see if Find Fast is installed and if it is, disable it.

Finally, have you scanned for trojans. AV programs aren't all that good at finding those. Do a Google search for "online trojan scan" and try one or more of them.

 

Thank you very kindly for your response! I did all those things, and theydidn't work. However, I did solve the problem.

I suspected that it was a problem in Explorer.exe - so I extracted that file from the Windows .cab files on the installation disk and copied it directly in to the Windows directory.

I rebooted the computer, and I've not had the problem since.

My theory is that Windows Update may have made some alteration to the explorer.exe file that resulted in it's chronically refreshing, thus causing this problem.

Hope this helps if anyone else experiences a problem like this.

Again, Thank you for responding, I genuinely appreciate it!

Have a terrific day!

John