Windows 7 - Accessing drives in Windows Explorer takes a long time

I just found this post, whilst trying to find out why my speedy Windows 7 PC was acting like a pensioner, when I clicked on a folder on my external drive.

I tried out all of the above, with no success, unfortunately.

I have a Seagate Freeagent USB2 - with a few folders of varying content. Most of the folders opened swiftly, irrespective of their size & contents. However, I have a folder to keep mainly movies in. Mainly, being the operative word here.

The strange thing was, if I looked at the folder inside my Network (whilst in Windows Explorer) .... the folder opened and showed all contents instantly! Back to looking at it under ''Computer'' ... and the explorer bar scanned for ages before letting me see things ???? .... strange.

Whilst going through all of the above suggestions, I happened to notice that in the properties of the folder ( Properties / Customize ) .... that the option was set to ''optimize this folder for ... Videos''.

However, I know that there are other items in there that are not videos! I changed the option to ''General items'' and ticked the ''Also apply this template to all subfolders''.

Voila.... problem solved !!

When I went back to the shared folder and checked the properties .... it was set to ''General items''. Wish I'd noticed it before, ..... so thought I'd post it here incase anyone else had the same situation