Windows 7 - Speeding up browsing of large folders

I have several folders with large numbers of files, which takes Explorer a long time to scan before opening. I also have the indexing service turned off on my system. Would turning indexing back on speed up the opening of folders?

If not, is there any other way to open folders with large numbers of files without incurring a long wait -- or are there any Explorer replacement programs that read folders faster?

Thanks.

hi wallywalters, and welcome to sevenforums,

when you say large numbers of files, what sort of numbers are we talking about?

it could be that your AV (antivirus) software is slowing you down - i noticed this with mse on one of my machines. what AV are you using?

try temporarily disabling your AV and see if that helps any - don't forget to turn it back on after the testing!

if it is your AV, then you can normally set it to exclude certain folders ion the future...

of course, it may have nothing to do with AV, but it's gotta be worth a try!

If they are video, music, or pictures files, or have combination of any of them, then it could be the folder options causing it to slow down.
I had that issue in the past and was told to right click on the folder, click on properties, and then go to customize, then "Optimize this folder for:" and select General Items, then click OK.
this will speed up the folder access time.

The problem folders typically contain 800 or more files. The anti-virus isn't at fault, as there is no anti-virus on the machine in question.

And I know I could speed things up by creating more subdirectories, but that would be impractical for my purposes for other reasons.

Thanks, Zephyr, but I have the "optimize" functionality turned off.

Check the folder anyways and see what it is set for.

We could use you system specs so we know what hardware we are dealing with

this is the folder customization options,

System specs are an Athlon X2 645, 16 GB DDR3, 2x2TB hard drives, Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

Are you opening Explorer in details view? That should be the fastest. If they are media files or images, you can turn thumbnails off in folder options. If none of that helps, try Q-Dir native 64 bit portable:

Q-Dir the Quad Explorer for Windows - Q-Dir