"Pictures" library is very slow

I don't understand why this happens, nor how I can fix it. I wonder if anybody else has any input on the issue.

Every time I load a folder in "My Pictures", all the thumbnails seem to re-load themselves, and loading the folder can take extremely long. I have some folders with over 1000 images, and when I load them, it will take sometimes up to 30 seconds before the subdirectories in those folders will even show. It seems as if the thumbnails are loading from left to right, top to bottom. What's even more strange is that the icon for the file doesn't even show at all until the thumbnail is loaded - There will be no filename, nor even a blank thumbnail box showing that the file is there, but just no thumbnail cached yet. Also, the address bar (for lack of a better term) in explorer shows the green progress meter scrolling across the frame while it completes loading the folder.

When I move one of these folders out of the Pictures library, into any other normal folder (like my root folder, or to "My Music"), the thumbnails load instantly, as would be expected... even the folder with over 1000 images. I can flip through folders really fast and not have any issue. It's only when I have the folder type set to Pictures that any of these problems happen.

FWIW, I'm running Windows 7 Professional with a Core2 Duo 2.2ghz CPU, 4GB of DDR2 ram, a Geforce 8800 video card, and two freshly defragged 7200rpm hard drives. Resources are not an issue whatsoever.

But the issue is that I want to show the thumbnails, and I want the folder to stay customized for pictures. I would like to know if there is a way to disable that specific behavior, or if that behavior is even normal. I don't see why having a folder classified as a "pictures" folder would require it to rebuild the image cache every single time I load the folder.

Hell for that matter, I don't even think it's really just rebuilding the cache. When I changed the folder type, and loaded a new folder, the image cache built itself insanely fast (like, in 2 seconds)... yet it still somehow takes 30 seconds to load a folder classified as an image folder :/

Edit: Also, just to clarify: Even when I change the view mode from "Large Icons" to anything different, like "list" or "details", it still takes forever to load the list of files within the folder, even though it's not showing thumbnails at all. So there has to be something else at issue here.

Ok, here's another oddity: When I access "My Pictures" directly from the folder path, everything is fine. But when I load it through the "Library" feature, everything is slow. So this has something to do with the libraries, not the folder settings themselves.

Kari said:

I'm bailing out. The solution I offered fixes your issue. Using it or not is your decision.

Kari

I must be doing something wrong then. When I use that fix it only shows small icons and not thumbnails (I'm looking at photos). If I then choose to use the slider and change it from icons to thumbnails, then I have the same problem all over again.

Oddly, this happens with very small photos. I would expect it from large ones or raw files, but something small I saved from the web I would think it would show very fast.