Windows 7 - Windows Explorer takes a long time to load?

What's going on with the icon on my taskbar? It takes 22 seconds to load Explorer. Every other link to a folder in Explorer is practically instantaneous, including the links in Start Menu.

You can try unpinning the Windows Explorer icon from the taskbar, then type Windows Explorer in the search function on the Start Menu. It should display Windows Explorer on the top of the search results, right click that and pin to taskbar.

Have you looked into the issue that maybe this is because of malware that is slowing down Windows Explorer when launched from the taskbar icon?

I've looked into that. It seems doubtful, as I have a decent Antivirus Program.

Explorer also loads slowly from the Start Menu and most likely from other locations as well.

Try this;

QTTabBar

solves the problems with Explorer lag. Starts a lot faster than Explorer by itself, as the developer has streamlined some code.

Regards....Mike Connor

That's fine...if you want to avoid the problem. Isn't there a way to fix the problem I'm having?

I appreciate the answer, though.

That does not avoid the problem, it actually fixes it. The problem is known as "explorer lag". Depending on where you call Explorer from, and how you call it, this can be a severe problem.

Some more information on that;

Memory leak when calling AutomationElement::ElementFromPoint on Items View object

Scrolling Lag Bug COMPLETELY FIXED!! « QTTabBar

Automation Bug Postmortem « QTTabBar

QTTabBar


There is no other fix for it, because although Microsoft accept that it is a bug, they are either unwilling or unable to fix it.

Regards....Mike Connor

It would be useful to get a process monitor log started right before you click explorer in the superbar, and then stop/save it to a .pml file right after it finishes loading. It could be the above, but it could be any other number of things. Procmon should at least allow us to not guess.