Explorer (window management) alternative for Windows 10

For as long as Windows 10 has been around, I've had tremendous issues with UI fluidity and speed on the OS. An example:

On a new ThinkPad laptop with fairly high specs, I opened Explorer and went to C:\SomeFolder. I pressed shift+ctrl+n to create a new folder. The green progress meter started running on the address bar for 20 seconds! Then what? Nothing. No "New Folder". I had to press F5 and then New Folder appeared. This kind of behaviour is even worse on network drives. This is totally unacceptable and impossible.

You may think this is not normal, my system is corrupted. But I've encountered many same or similar problems on at least 5 other Win10 machines. It's just much, much slower and more difficult to do basic things on a Win10 computer compared to Win7.

1. If you have suggestions how to fix this NewFolder/Rename/etc. directory listing update problem, please let me know. None of the fixes I've seen so far have worked.

2. Is there an alternative for Explorer that would actually work lightning fast for new folder etc.? I have tried some alternatives such as FreeCommander, but haven't been happy so far. One important requirement is the ability to show a preview pane (which is part of Win7+Win10 explorer), showing smart previews of media files (much bigger than thumbnails).

Thanks for the info about the F5 problem. That explains things (even this is not good UI design).

After my previous post I now noticed that XYplorer XYplorer - File Manager for Windows has a pretty nice Preview pane with PDF preview working (after an extension). And seems to update the directory listing without much delay. Though so far it totally hanged many times and crashes, don't know why yet.

The directory listing problem is of course not present on only Explorer desktop windows. The same applies to all Open and Save dialogues as well. For example I just tried to save something, then tried to create a new folder where to save. Either right click / New or shift+ctrl+n, doesn't matter which. I got nothing. No new folder. After pressing F5 it appears.

Is there a working fix for this? I can't be pressing F5 all the time.

To me, it sounds as if your W10 installation has some bugs to be excised. I have been using W10 on a variety of systems since before RTM and don't recall ever having experienced those problems. I just tried the shift+ctrl+n on the slowest system that I have, and the result was instantaneous. Have you run system checks such as sfc /scannow? You could also try resetting File Explorer, although I think your problems are elsewhere.

For what I understand, I don't think this is a bug in my system but more like a "known issue" instead. If it is a problem very specific to my systems, it would mean that a few of my systems, totally independent of eachother (totally different corporations' laptops etc.) would by coincidence have the same problems. SFC /scannow doesn't help. Yes, shift+ctrl+n sometimes works instantly even on all systems. But, some systems have problems with that. Not always, but it's bad when it happens in a hurry and in a large folder (you have to press F5 and then find where New folder is etc.). Same problem with any folder update like when renaming etc.

I have now used XYplorer a lot. It does behave much better with the folder update. However, it has it's own problems. For example it loads insanely slowly, zip support especially between Explorer is not good etc.

What I need is very quick and automatic F5 every time I make a change on an Explorer window, including Open/Save dialogues. Strange that not so many are complaining about this. It's terrible. I guess I could make an AutoHotkey script that would do shift+ctrl+n -> shift+ctrl+n, F5. And pressing enter would be enter, F5. But probably there will be lots of problems with that. A better solution is needed.