I have been having performance problems with Windows Explorer since I
built a new PC with Windows XP.  I am running Windows XP Home Edition
Version 2002 on an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ with 512 MB of RAM.  I have
dual 80GB Maxtor ATA133 7200RPM hard drives, the second being used
only for weekly backups.

I collect cover scans from old magazines, paperback books, comic
books, and similar popular culture material.  I currently have about
130,000 scan files filling 20GB of my 80GB hard drive.  The scans are
organized in a directory hierarchy that has most of the files three to
five levels deep.  Here's a typical sample path:

    C:\ZData\a-Publishing\Comic Book Interesting Covers\aa-Fiction
House Comics\Fight Comics

Most of the directories have a few hundred files in them, although
they range from two files to one huge directory that holds over 8,800
files.

My specific performance problem is that it takes almost a minute to
navigate down to a subdirectory the first time.  When I select
C:\ZData, the PC hard drive churns for 20-30 seconds before it shows
me the five subdirectories under ZData.  That painful process repeats
with each directory level.  After the first time, most directories
will open instantly, although there is still an occasional 10 to 15
second delay.

This is a shared drive, and opening the same directories using a
different PC on my network is virtually instantaneous.

I use Windows Explorer set to View Details, and on the rare occasion
that I change to View Thumbnails, the files are displayed
sequentially, to the accompaniment of much hard drive activity.

Do you have any idea what my computer is doing during these delays? 
And do you have any suggestions to improve performance?  I spend a lot
of time in Windows Explorer, and my old PIII 550 running WIN98SE was
(and still is) a lot faster than my current setup at this particular
task.

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 30 Mar 2004 18:52 PST

kaan...

Have you scanned for adware, viruses, worms, etc...?
Do you have Winzip installed?

sublime1-ga

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Clarification of Question by kaan-ga on 30 Mar 2004 19:53 PST

Yes, I am virus-free so far as Fix-It Utilities 5's virus scanner can tell.
I run Ad Aware on a regular basis, so adware is not an issue.
I do not have Winzip installed.
I DO have Powerdesk installed (comes with Fix-It) which is associated
with all types of archive files.

The folder opening performance issue has been in effect since the
computer was built over a year ago.

First make sure you have you windows patched to the latest version and
have Service Pack 1 installed.

Second, try registry fix #2 "Increase Folder View Size Limit to 8000" at this page:
http://kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Third, See MSKB 819017 "Long Delay Before Files Appear in My Computer
in Windows XP"
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;819017&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

Thanks for your suggestions, nexex.  Here is some feedback.

I will back up my PC tonight and try installing Service Pack 1
tomorrow evening.  I'd been avoiding the Service Pack because I had
read that it created problems in some cases.

I tried registry fix #2, but it does not make any difference.

The only portion of MSKB 819017 that applied to my setup was that
Windows Image Acquisition was running.  I tried stopping that service,
but it made no detectable difference in the time required to open a
directory.

kaan-ga:

Do you happen to have a hard drive controller that allows you to
'optimize' your hard drives for acoustics, power management, etc.? I
do, and for my Maxtor HD, setting it to minimum acoustic output just
kills the access speed compared to my Seagate Barracuda IV. I now have
it set to maximum performance, and just live with the periodic drive
head arm noise. A little noise is better than waiting for the hard
drive to decide to retrieve the data I'm looking for.

aht-ga
Google Answers Researcher

Switch your directory view to details, and make sure your drives are
NTFS (you can convert to NTFS if need be)

1. Go to Run in the startmenu
2. Type gpedit.msc
3. Click OK and the Group Policy will open
4. Go to User Configuration/Administrative Template/Windows
Components/Windows Explorer
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the long list of stuff that now shows
up in the menu on the right. Double-Click on Turn off caching of
thumbnail pictures.
6. Click on Enable then Apply, Ok. And now you no longer have this annoying problem.

forgot my last comment, to solve your problem you must:

go to Control Panel > Folder Options > View > "Do not cache thumbnails"

nexex, I've installed Service pack 1 and 30-some priority updates. 

Windows Explorer does behave differently now.  If I click on the "+"
next to the folder name in the left pane, it still takes a long time
to display subfolders in the left pane.  However, if I click on the
folder name, most of the time (not always)the subfolders are displayed
immediately in the right pane.

At least some success points can be awarded to nexex.  The situation
is significantly improved.  Thanks!

- - - - -

aht, I don't have a hard drive controller that allows adjustments to
performance.  Thanks for trying.

- - - - 

xeno555, my hard drive was already NTFS, but thanks for checking.

- - - - 

thedors, I tried setting Folder Options > View > "Do not cache thumbnails"
some time ago.  I could not try your suggestion to run gpedit.msc.  I
could not get gpedit.msc to run.  I'm running XP Home.  Does
gpedit.msc require XP Server?

in windows explorer right click on the c:drive(your main hard drive)
then click tools then defragmentation. Analyze your drive to see if it
needs to do this. If it does you will se  a lot of red or black.this
might help.

You might be experiencing the same thing I was.  I have a directory
similar to yours, but with gigs upon gigs of zips. I'm an Oracle DBA
so I download tons of Oracle Applications. As WinXP loads a directory,
it displays zip files as navigatable 'folders'. Doing so, however,
causes XP Windows Explorer to load slower than sin.  Try this:

Not Viewing Zip Files as Folders (Added 3/4/04)

If you want to turn of WindowsXP showing Zip files as folders, just run:

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

Source: http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#zip_files_folders

Thanks for your suggestion, Mysteryrain.  Unfortunately defragging
made no perceptable difference.

Re: thedors-ga's solution - thumbnail caching disable

Worked like a charm.  Thanks so much for posting this!  You've saved
me hours of aggrevation!

I believe I have found the problem.  If you have Photoshop installed
on your computer an option is set by default on all images to show a
thumbnail.  You need to turn this off.

Right click on any image (thumbnail) select properties > then select
the tab called Photoshop Image > deselect the check box Generate
Thumbnails (then ok out of the tab window to save your new settings)

By doing this you will affect all thumbnails (so don't worry about
doing this to all image files).  I had the same problem you were
describing and this solved everything.  Thumbnails now show almost
instantly.

Zimmer, I have Photoshop 7 installed on my PC, but when I right-click
on an image file in Windows Explorer, I do not see a tab called
Photoshop Image.  Please clarify.

Thanks.

Kaan, after you right click on an image file in windows explorer you
must do one more step -select properties.  This will bring up a tabed
window (should be three tabs to select from) where the 2nd tab is
titled 'photoshop image'.  From there you will deselect the checkbox
for create thumbnails.

Zimmer, that is the procedure I was following.  However, I only get
two tabs instead of the three you describe.  Are you getting the third
tab because Photoshop is the program associated with your image files?
 (I use Vuepro as my default image viewer.)  Or perhaps it relates to
some setting in Windows Explorer.

Kaan-ga

Kaan, I really do believe it has to do with Photoshop 7.  I'm
perplexed as to why you don't have a third tab in your properties box.
 However try checking out this site -
http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=004nJK - Some
have uninstalled photoshop, some have removed/changed file
associations away from PS, others used the trick I did.  Good luck.

I just had a very similar problem.  Windows Explorer took forever,
computer was locking up, etc.  Downloading the new version 1.3 of
SpyBot, updating the definitions, and running it revealed two pieces
of spyware that the old SpyBot and AdAware 6.0 hadn't picked up.  I
eliminated them and everything works fine, now.

RandoT

I once had a similar problem with my picture folders, but a simple
solution fixed it.

Right-click on the affected top layer folder. Click "properties",
click the "Customize" tab. In the "Use this folder type as a
template:" field, choose "Pictures(best for many files)". Check off
"Also apply this template to all subfolders". Click "Apply".

My previous comment about SpyBot and AdAware turned out not to be a
permanent fix.  Now I don't know what's going on, either.  "My
Computer"/Windows Explorer is still very slow and unstable, although
it's much faster when other programs are closed.  This might mean that
the processor is working too hard on some background process and can't
handle the load.  Could this be related to constant indexing of the
files and folders as part of a "quick find" feature?

RandoT

I had exactly the same type of behavior, not on one, but on multiple
clean-install machines).  Let's say for example, say five local drives
existed on my current computer - and only one of them responds slowly
in Windows Explorer, the rest respond normally.  I did some
experimenting and checking, and there was no abnormal amount of
content on the problem drive.  But.... it DID have zip files located
on the drive's root.  So, to test, I moved the zip files to a
subdirectory, opened the drive, and response returned to normal.  This
was on multiple drives, on multiple machines.  So I believe
unregistering the winzip hook from the explorer shell is the right
answer (regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll).  It worked for me, on all of my XP
boxes.

Mike McCoy

Mike, I tried this .zip file suggestion and it seemed to help for that
session.  But after overnight shutdown and restart, the same problem
happened again.  The really odd thing is that the explorer window
takes forever to come up, but if I minimize other open windows, it
speeds the process up.  This is what makes me think there's something
running in the background that's taking up a lot of processor time. 
Puzzling....

Randy