Extremely slow performance in Windows Explorer.

[Odinist]

Hi, first post. =)


I'm getting excruciatingly slow performance while browsing the contents of any of my hard drives. Double click on My Computer, wait about 15 seconds while the green bar along the top fills... Ah, there are my hard drives. Double click on one, wait about 15 seconds for the green bar... Ah, there's my music, etc. etc. etc.

If I'm inside a program, and do File > Open, and browse through my files, it goes as fast as normal. It only seems to be slow when browsing via Explorer.

There's no reason my system should be this slow, as it's a solid build:

EVGA 790i Ultra motherboard
Q9450 @ 3.6 GHz
4 gig 1600 MHz Corsair XMS
EVGA 8800GT @ 700/1750/2000


Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

 

[tathra464]

Well.. That makes 2 of us.. I'm not quite that slow, but pretty close.

 

[Brink]

Hello Odinist and Tathra, and welcome to Seven Forums.

You may have some form of malware on your computer, or you may have done a upgrade install that did not go to well.

I would recommend to thoroughly scan your computer with a antivirus and malware program to be safe, and see if a repair install may help.

If not, then you may need to format and do a clean reinstall.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[zigzag3143]

Hi, first post. =)


I'm getting excruciatingly slow performance while browsing the contents of any of my hard drives. Double click on My Computer, wait about 15 seconds while the green bar along the top fills... Ah, there are my hard drives. Double click on one, wait about 15 seconds for the green bar... Ah, there's my music, etc. etc. etc.

If I'm inside a program, and do File > Open, and browse through my files, it goes as fast as normal. It only seems to be slow when browsing via Explorer.

There's no reason my system should be this slow, as it's a solid build:

EVGA 790i Ultra motherboard
Q9450 @ 3.6 GHz
4 gig 1600 MHz Corsair XMS
EVGA 8800GT @ 700/1750/2000



Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Welcome to sevenforums. Someone will have the answer here.
Do you have indexing turned off? How big is the drive and how many files/folders?
waiting for info BTW if you fill in your "my system Specs" we will be able to help you more quickly.

Ken

 

[Lee]

I am having the same problem. Now there are no problems with a virus or malware (do a scan daily). In order to determine if this is something consistent only with Win 7 on my computer I did the following:

1. Being a dual boat jumped over to Vista 64 Ultimate and there was no problem.

2. Went back to 7 and ran XP (VM Ware) and there was no problem there.

Now this has been a problem since loading up 7100 RC, so it has been a daunting problem, and for me that is unusual because usually I can figure out a problem. Albeit I decided just to wait for RTM to see if the problem still exist.

System: Gateway FX 7026. Q9300 Intel(R) Core(TM) Quad 2.5 OC 64 bit
16 Gigs DDR2 6400 Memory, Windows Vista Ultimate 64, Windows
Seven 7100 RC 64 bit, VM Ware running Windos XP, Ubuntu, OpenSusie
11.2

 

[Odinist]

Hello Odinist and Tathra, and welcome to Seven Forums.

You may have some form of malware on your computer, or you may have done a upgrade install that did not go to well.

I would recommend to thoroughly scan your computer with a antivirus and malware program to be safe, and see if a repair install may help.

If not, then you may need to format and do a clean reinstall.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

No malware - I have AVG updated and running a daily scan. This is a clean install of Windows 7 RC. Before the install I was running Vista Ultimate 64 SP1, and didn't have the problem. If I boot into OS X (Hackintosh ^_^) I don't have the problem.

Welcome to sevenforums. Someone will have the answer here.
Do you have indexing turned off? How big is the drive and how many files/folders?
waiting for info BTW if you fill in your "my system Specs" we will be able to help you more quickly.

Ken

I hope so, that's why I came here, hehe. Indexing is turned off, but that didn't make a difference. The main drive is 250 gig, but I have two smaller (IDE) drives, and it's slow regardless of which drive I'm trying to browse. It's even slow just initially opening My Computer. I listed system specs in my initial post, but I've gone ahead an filled them in the proper way if you want to take a look.

I saw another post on here, a guy having the same issue. He said that he resolved it by changing his drives from being optimized for "General Folders" to "Documents." I tried that, and it seems to help for maybe an hour or so, but then the problem reared its head again.

 

[Brink]

You may have a corrupted installation. You might try the repair install to see if it can help.

 

[Odinist]

It's worth a shot... I'll give it a go when I get home from work. =)

 

[fseal]

Well I foud the same thing on my machine (7100).

Compared to even vista, browsing folders with large numbers of media files was a crawl. By default W7 is trying to suck information about the files out, posibly even creating thumbnails or indexing them on the fly. The automatic "Let me put you into picture view mode because you have one jpeg in this folder" "Feature" is REALLY REALLY ANNOYING!

But for 7100 the problem was WAY worse for some reason. Anyway, as in most every other version of windows, I go tot he root of the drive and then to the folder settings ("Customize") and set the current folder view to "general files" or "general documents" I think it was called (It changes name every OS). Then select "Apply to all folders".

That makes it show nothing but the file system info for each file like ghod intended, no thumbnails, no id3 tag parsing, no jpeg header parsing, just size, date, and name. Opening large folders is again instantly fast.

You may have to go back to certain folders you wanted to actually be in icon view and set those again, the preview and icon modes are not bad IF *I* get to control when it does and doesn't happen.

Course unfortuantely you eventually run into the bag mru limit problem and after a few weeks or months Windows starts randomly changing your folder views on you again... I really wish tthere was a single place you could just turn that off completely.

 

[zigzag3143]

apply to all oflder

Well I foud the same thing on my machine (7100).

Compared to even vista, browsing folders with large numbers of media files was a crawl. By default W7 is trying to suck information about the files out, posibly even creating thumbnails or indexing them on the fly. The automatic "Let me put you into picture view mode because you have one jpeg in this folder" "Feature" is REALLY REALLY ANNOYING!

But for 7100 the problem was WAY worse for some reason. Anyway, as in most every other version of windows, I go tot he root of the drive and then to the folder settings ("Customize") and set the current folder view to "general files" or "general documents" I think it was called (It changes name every OS). Then select "Apply to all folders".

That makes it show nothing but the file system info for each file like ghod intended, no thumbnails, no id3 tag parsing, no jpeg header parsing, just size, date, and name. Opening large folders is again instantly fast.

You may have to go back to certain folders you wanted to actually be in icon view and set those again, the preview and icon modes are not bad IF *I* get to control when it does and doesn't happen.

Course unfortuantely you eventually run into the bag mru limit problem and after a few weeks or months Windows starts randomly changing your folder views on you again... I really wish tthere was a single place you could just turn that off completely.

Really nice +1 rep

Ken

 

[Odinist]

Seal, I believe it was your thread a few pages back that I referenced in my second post on this thread. I tried doing what you're suggesting, and it works for a short period of time, but then things go to hell again.

Also, there's no way to set "My Computer's" view option, and just opening My Computer (oops, Win 7... I meant just "Computer," not "My Computer) is slow. Also, there's no way to change the way files are displayed when I right click > properties on the C drive. The option is there for all my other drives, but not for C.

 

[Odinist]

Quick update...

It's too early to say whether or not it lasts, but the repair install seems to have fixed the problem.

Thanks Brink!

 

[Brink]

You're welcome Odinist. I'm happy to hear that it seems to be fixed.

 

[MadMatt]

Unfortunately it will be back slow again after a week. I experienced this since 7077 to 7600 which I'm using currently. Countless search on the internet for a way to fix this but haven't found any luck so far, only a conclusion that this has become the common problem of windows 7 I assume.

 

[Remco]

Slow performance in Windows Explorer - a burner

I too had all the symptoms and spent a day including

• Reconstructing the Windows file index
• Repairing Windows with a "SFC /scannow" in command and with a repair disc.
• Removing some startup programs like Acronis.

In the end I discovered the problem was with a faulty DVD burner that even though it did not contain a DVD somehow promoted prolonged HD access. The burner was a SATA as is my HD.

A surprising source of the problem that plagued me for days.

 

[richardyc]

search

What works for me was going to task manager and ending "Windows search indexer"

 

[Apteryx]

Control Panel->AdministrativeTools->Services->Windows Search->Disabled.


Voila!