File Explorer is slow across multiple different systems?

Software & Operating Systems Windows
1

I have this weird and confusing issue with File Explorer that’s been happening on different systems, and most of these issues existed on both Windows 10 and 11.
What happens is that just using File Explorer normally, such as navigating folders and opening files, has this weird freeze / lock up.

When opening a folder, that specific File Explorer window will freeze for up to a minute before finally opening the folder.
When opening a file, the file will take up to a minute to actually open in the specified handler for that file type. If there is no file handler associated with that file type, then the delay will happen for Windows trying to open the “open with” menu.
Similarly, but only on Windows 10, if I right-click on a file and move my mouse to the “open with…” entry, that freeze occurs until all the options show up in the context menu. This doesn’t happen in Windows 11, however.

I figure these issues shouldn’t be happening on a system like mine, which has a watercooled Ryzen 5950X on a Gigayte X570 Aorus Master, using 4x32GB (128GB total) 4000MHz memory, and using a watercooled RTX 3090, and Windows is installed on a Samsung 970 Evo M.2 PCIe 3.0 SSD.

I’ve tried figuring this out for such a long time, including:

  1. Testing different HDD’s and SSD’s - these issues happen regardless of where the files/folders are located.
  2. Checked Event Viewer for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary, but to no avail.
  3. Running different Windows 10/11 debloating tools - O&O ShutUp, StopWindowstracking, ThisIsWin11, Ultimate Windows Toolbox, and even running TronScript to scan for any viruses and remove misc Windows stuff.
  4. Defragmenting my HDD’s.
  5. Scanning for Windows issues with sfc /scannow and running chkdsk c: /F /R /B, but no issues are found.
  6. Reinstalling Windows 10 - tried using the Media Creation Tool to repair/update, and then tried a clean install by deleting the Windows partition and installing Win10 through USB.
  7. Installed Win11 cleanly to replace Win10 - this fixed the context menu issues, but not the other two issues.
  8. Checking for I/O issues with LatencyMon, SanityCheck, WhySoSlow, etc. but nothing out of the ordinary there.
  9. Removing any sort of background apps & services, including disabling Windows Search (replaced with Search Everything) & SysMain.
  10. Trying different system & GPU power profiles (through Control Panel and EVGA Precision X1, respectively).

The strange thing is that I tried two File Explorer alternatives - Files and Directory Opus.
Files works slightly faster than File Explorer, but still generally suffers from the same issues.
But strangely, Directory Opus works perfectly - not a single issue involving lag or delay of just using the program, and I have no idea how it just works as intended vs just plain File Explorer.

Does anyone have any idea what else I could try here?

2

Any issues during gaming, file copies, or video playback?

Did you install any applications afterwards? Whenever I’m troubleshooting Explorer hangs I normally look towards apps that have some type of shell integration. Adobe Acrobat seems to be a frequent offender. Do you get hangs in Safe Mode too?

Do you have a SATA SSD drive you can install a fresh copy of Windows 11 on? Would quickly rule out it being an issue with your Samsung 970.

3

Grab drive testing software for each of your drives based on what the manufacturer recommends. Run the tests. This sounds like a drive issue (could easily be a bad cable too.) Basically the system is waiting for the drive to supply the data.

1 Like
4

probably not the issue but how many files are in the root directory?
has to do with indexing issues.
if i remember right there is a limit to the number of files you can put in the root directory.
alone 255 maybe!
but as long as you tree the directories properly you can store up to 100,000 or so files per directory according to the capacity of your drive.
i had to teach proper file organization to the guys at work.
i could be wrong on the numbers because its been 10 years since I taught it.

5

It’s been some time, and I’ve done quite a few more tests.

Any issues during gaming, file copies, or video playback?

No issues with video playback or copying/cutting/pasting files - just the general usability of File Explorer becomes terrible when trying to navigate folders and open files.

Did you install any applications afterwards? Whenever I’m troubleshooting Explorer hangs I normally look towards apps that have some type of shell integration. Adobe Acrobat seems to be a frequent offender. Do you get hangs in Safe Mode too?

Amazingly the hanging does not occur in Safe Mode at all! So that would lead me to believe that some app, File Explorer extension, or service is causing the issue - but narrowing it down is insanely difficult. Any tips?

Do you have a SATA SSD drive you can install a fresh copy of Windows 11 on? Would quickly rule out it being an issue with your Samsung 970.

This also happens on my laptop and my previous desktop, both of which were using different SSD’s that the 970 Evo that I’m using now, but the issue persists. I haven’t seen any SMART errors for any of those systems’ OS drives, and even running short & long tests don’t show any issues.

Grab drive testing software for each of your drives based on what the manufacturer recommends. Run the tests. This sounds like a drive issue (could easily be a bad cable too.) Basically the system is waiting for the drive to supply the data.

I downloaded and ran all the individual disk programs (Western Digital, Samsung, and Seagate) no errors of any kind on any of my drives, on any of my systems. I even swapped out the SATA cables for the SATA drives and nothing changed.

probably not the issue but how many files are in the root directory?
has to do with indexing issues.
if i remember right there is a limit to the number of files you can put in the root directory.
alone 255 maybe!
but as long as you tree the directories properly you can store up to 100,000 or so files per directory according to the capacity of your drive.
i had to teach proper file organization to the guys at work.
i could be wrong on the numbers because its been 10 years since I taught it.

Not sure how this could be a thing, at least on a Windows system. I not only disabled the Windows Search and indexing services (issue exists regardless of that being on or off), but like I said, this happens on multiple systems, all of which have different number of files on the Windows SSD’s and different programs on them - the number of files (especially on an SSD) shouldn’t be doing anything like freezing File Explorer, especially when browsing other drives in the system.

Seems even more unlikely when just the Windows folder itself has over 200k files/folders in it - are you sure you’re not thinking of some Linux issue?

6

May be a little late, but I think I saw on BleepingComputer today that some of the latest KB’s introduced these same problems and there are hotfixes in the works to remedy it.

ETA: Yep. Here it is: Windows 10 optional updates fix performance problems introduced last month

7

So I do have KB5008353, which is the update specifically for Win11 (whereas the the first one listed in the article, KB5009596, is for Win10) but it has unfortunately not fixed my issues.

I even tried manually downloading those KB’s and installing them, but both get a popup that says “This update is not applicable to your computer”.

Interesting tidbit, KB5009596 and KB5008353 are actually the exact same update - same file size, same file name.

8

You could try uninstalling the KB that caused the issue

9

I don’t even have the update that caused issues for people in January (KB5009543) - and my issue has been happening for way longer than that update has existed. I’m not sure how to find the specific update that could’ve caused my issue

11

I’d start by enabling Selective Startup and disabling all 3rd party services and startup items. This can be done from the System Configuration App. There is another tool we can use later to dig in to shell extensions if we can’t narrow down here.

Start → Run → msconfig.exe

Choose Selective Startup and uncheck Load startup items

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On your Services Tab, sort the list by Manufacturer and uncheck anything that isn’t Microsoft.
Edit: Or there is a checkbox below to hide Microsoft Services. Might be quicker to hide them and then use the Disable all button

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Reboot and see if the problem still exists.