Windows Slow working of: Copying, or Deleting Files

[ariespaan]

HI,

I still work with Windows-7 and i see that the last year Copying or deleting from files is very, very slow
When i copy or delete files, with File-Explorer, Qdir. or Xyplorer, i see a small window with the text: Copying or Deleting file (filename)... But the actual copying or deleting will now start after some 2 or 3 minutes!!!
I do not know why the system is waiting before it starts copying or deleting
Has anyone some suggestions?

Thanks

 

[wither 2]

I would suggest going to Accessories, System Tools. Run the Disk Cleanup utility. When it says how much space it can recover, make sure that the boxes for Temporary Files and Recycle Bin are checked. After it runs, reboot. If you have an SSD, I suggest running the Trim function.

Out of curiosity, how much free space do you have on your C: drive?

 

[ariespaan]

Disk Cleanup Utility Shows: 7.5 Mb Free to recover

I have a Hard disk, no SSD in use

Total Disk C-drive is 500GB, Used: 87 GB, Free: 365 GB
I already have used: Disk-Defragmention etc,

Is it possible that Windows-Indexing could be the problem?
(If so, what can i change in Indexing-settings?)

 

[RolandJS]

I turned off my Windows and any 3rd party utility indexing long ago. I use FileFind utility in place of indexed search utilities. I also have that behavior in my explorer much like yours.

 

[wither 2]

Disk Cleanup Utility Shows: 7.5 Mb Free to recover

I have a Hard disk, no SSD in use

Total Disk C-drive is 500GB, Used: 87 GB, Free: 365 GB
I already have used: Disk-Defragmention etc,

Is it possible that Windows-Indexing could be the problem?
(If so, what can i change in Indexing-settings?)

Did you mean 7.5 MB or GB? 7.5 MB is miniscule.

You would want to defrag the hard drive after doing the disk cleanup.

 

[ariespaan]

Dear RolandJS,

You say: You turned Windows off, and any 3rd party utility indexing.
Could you explain how you did that, because i do not know anything about Indexing.
And where can i find: Filefind utility? what you have in use

Thanks for your advice already

 

[file3456]

I doubt it's indexing, it could, but I doubt it. Especially since RonaldJS indicates he has the issue and turned off indexing.

What might be happening here are two things, and I already mentioned this in another thread that RonaldJS was in.

1) Your hard drive is dying.

2) You have some software there that is interrupting the Explorer process or read/write IOPS.


For the first possible case, you want to check SMART data of the hard drive. This may not be a tell all at all, but it's worth looking at. To do that use Crystal Disk Info. CrystalDiskInfo – Crystal Dew World The standard version will suffice unless your into Anime. LOL

I would also do a chkdsk on the drive. Read this

There's another tool that's quite good called Hard Drive Sentinel. You just want to perform a read test, not a write test. A write test would of course write over your hard drive. That option is to test hard drives where you don't carte about the data on them or blank hard drives.

Moving on to #2. I'd need to see your computer environment with Autoruns. Autoruns can tell me what is all loading on computer boot, services, DLLs, etc and if I see something that may be an issue you can temporally disable it, restart the computer, perform a copy operation and see if the issue is fixed. If the hard drive reports back as being fine, then I'm assuming it's a software issue. For me to see what you have running on your computer with Autoruns, run Autoruns, go to File and save the ARN file. Zip the ARN file and upload that zip file here. Autoruns for Windows - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs First test your hard drives for issues.

 

[RolandJS]

MajorGeeks carries FileFind. I'm at school, if memory serves me, I went into Explorer's last tab on the right[?], somewhere is a click box to either turn on or turn off indexing. When I get home, I can re-look up that tab and guide you better.

 

[RolandJS]

Follow F22SimPilot's advice, such is good as gold! We can worry about indexing later, after other things have been explored/fixed.

 

[file3456]

As to turning of indexing, you can do that by going to search, enter the word services and find the Windows Search service. Now stop and select disabled. In replace of Windows Search I personally use Everything.exe. With Everything it'll build its database in about 30 seconds or less and you can find ANYTHING on the current drive or attached drive in milliseconds. Also, in Everything you can use the advanced option to search for text withen files. But for that I prefer FileSeek.

Downloads - voidtools

FileSeek: Lightning Fast File Search by Binary Fortress Software

I think there's not a day that goes by I don't recommend Everything. LOL

 

[ariespaan]

In my first Post i mentioned that, when i use copy/delete of files, i first get a message saying copy/delete, but the action does not start immediately but some 1 or 2 minutes later
I attached a couple of these messages, where you can see, that the system is waiting to execute the action
What also is interested, that these problems only occurs, of filetypes: PDF
All other filetypes (Jpg. txt. exe) don't have that problem. In those cases the action is executed immedediately

 

[wither 2]

Are you selecting more than one file at a time when doing the copy or delete or doesn't it matter. Not sure why PDF would be a problem unless they're large files.

 

[file3456]

Adobe?

Ditch that once and see if the action works faster.

And thanks for ignoring everything I said...

 

[wither 2]

Do I detect some sarcasm?

 

[ariespaan]

Dear F22 Simpilot

I have done, all what you asked for.
For instance i have tested my hard disk with several programs (HDtune Pro, Chkdsk, Hd Sentinel etc. A;so with the win7-Software
I also checked with Smart-report. I found no problems all worked fine (The HD is some 2 years old)

Dear Wither 2:

The copy and delete files: I have done this by one-at-a-time and also with more than one the same time
The problem is in both cases the same

About, what i said by the filetype: PDF:
Might it be possible, that during the copy or delete, the PDF is tested by Microsoft defender or mine Mcafee virus-checker
(It might be that deleting a pdf-file, it could be tested again, because it is transferred to the garbage ban?

By he way: Has anywone also seen the images in post: 11. showing the system is waiting for some time?

 

[wither 2]

I had looked at your images and, via translation, it looked like the system is "searching" for the files. I never understood that and had intended to ask you about it.

I had thought about AV before but couldn't see how the anti-virus would affect the transfers but, I'm no expert.

I also looked at the settings in Acrobat Reader and, depending on some settings when a file is saved, there may be issues with transfers/deletions. For instance, if you open Reader and click on Edit, Protection, Security Settings, there's Time Stamps, Digital ID's, Encryption, etc. I don't pretend to understand all that and I never looked at them when saving files. I don't know the source of your files. I assume you're not using your laptop on a network at work.

I don't know how personal your files are but, if you wanted to upload a couple to a website such as one drive, dropbox, etc.; share them; and get a link, you could post the link and we could download and test on our systems. I had done a copy of 1/2 dozen PDFs, albeit small, at one time from one partition to another last night and didn't see the problem you're having.

 

[ariespaan]

Thanks Wither 2 for your detailed explanation

I have tested, till now, with a lot of files, and i see that the problems, i talked about, is not always the same
Sometimes, the system is waiting for execution the action (as i mentioned before) and in other cases the system is executed the action immediately without waiting (very confusing)

Also i used smal and big files, copy/delete to internal HD and external HD/USB-keys,
Sometimes the system is waiting before executing en in other cases very fast
So, i cannot think what i can do anymore at the moment. so i think i can better stop searching furthermore

The last thing i will try is: to turn off the Windows-searching service, see if that give any result

Everybody: Thanks for all your advices

 

[file3456]

If it's happening to only certain PDFs, those PDFs may have a load of macros and crap and/or contain a canary token. Doubtful, but I'll just throw that out there. Scan the problematic PDFs at Virus Total once and see what that says. Quite curios.

 

[wither 2]

Is the problem the worst when using USB keys? They're slower than a standard HDD/SSD.