Windows 7: Win7 is searching drives and folder when I open them

Hi

When I open drives from My Computer and when opening large folders, there is a delay in opening these items because Windows 7 automatically start searching the drive or folder that I double click to open.

This never happened in Win XP.

Is there a way to disable this automatic searching of drives and folders? It really slows down my workflow.



Window 7 Ultimate 64
16 gb ram

Thanks for any suggestions

Searching for what? What is displayed after the "search"?

Hello win123, and welcome to Seven Forums.

If you have your hard drives set to turn off when idle in your advanced power plan options, then that could cause a delay like that while it waits on the hard drive(s) to spin back up. You could check using the tutorial below to see if you do, and set it to "Never" to not have the hard drive(s) turn off to see if that may help afterwards.

Hard Drive - Turn Off Hard Disk After Idle or Never

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hi Thanks for responding.

In the Search box, after "Search" is the name of the drive. Example:If the drive label is "Pictures Drive", it says "Search Pictures Drive" in the Search box in the upper right.

While searching, the gray progress bar progresses from left to right and I cannot access the contents of the drive either til it is finishes searching the entire drive or I click the red close button, close the drive and reopen it.

Hi Shawn

I do have my Power Settings set turn off my monitor and hard drives after 25 minutes of idle... but why would that trigger the Search progress bar activity?

It sounds like it is just parsing the contents of the drive for display rather than performing a search of the drive. The progress of this parsing is what you're seeing in the navigation bar. If your hard drives are set to sleep, it has to wake them up and re-read the directory data on them before it can be displayed, which it sounds like you're seeing and waiting for after you click on them. Does this happen every time you click on the drive (say you click on it once, wait for it all to display, close the window, then re-open again and double click on the drive) or only after not clicking on them for a while (and them going to sleep)?

The searching seems to occur when I have not accessed a drive in a while. That may be what I am experiencing.

Thanks

The issue could also be exacerbated by a slower (5400 rpm) hard drive if this is a laptop. It sounds like Brink's suggestion is what is needed here, though. Try that out and see if the issue still occurs. If it does, post back and we'll continue to troubleshoot.

In Power Options I set "Turn off hard disc" to "Never". Two hours later I tested my system by opening various hard drives and the searching/delay problem has vanished.

Thank you all very much for helping me to find the cause.

Great. Don't forget to Add Reputation to Brink.