Slow folder access

Recently I've been experiencing a strange problem. When I try to open a certain folder while browsing through "my computer", it takes around 5 seconds for the browser to access it.

The window pretty much freezes, and there's continuous HD activity during the wait time.

This started around 2 days ago, I haven't done any changes to that folder though. It basically contains around 6 GBs of music and game mods.

Strange is that the folder opens immediately if I access it through a desktop shortcut.

The folder is located in my 80 GB hard drive, which has around 10 GBs of free space now. It's the only folder that shows that problem.

I've tried defragmenting and freeing space to no avail as well.

Any ideas on how to solve the problem?

dan

Generally you want 15%+ of free space on any NTFS drive.

Check your SMART settings.
Same thing happened to me, and it was a matter of XP reinstall, but when I tried to install Linux, it told me that the drive shall die soon. (and it did).

Try deleting the thumbs.db located within the folder you're having problems with ( it'll be recreated the next time the folder is opened.) The thumbs.db file is a cache of the thumbnail pictures in a directory, which speeds up the showing of thumbnails when you're viewing a folder in Thumbnail view. It's a hidden file, so make sure to enable "Show hidden files and folders" in order to view it.

How much memory does explorer.exe take up when this problem is happening?


There was a problem with my windows where windows kept calculating the length of all the files in the folder over and over again so it always took a while for folders to open.

Google for "high memory use explorer.exe" if this is the problem

Well, nevermind. I just cleaned up the drive a littlebit, and now everything is normal again.

Strange though that it only happened with that folder, if the drive was just too cluttered I would have expected every folder to open as slowly .

I'll keep my eye on it though, don't want it to just die all of the sudden without having made a backup of some sort.

dan