File Explorer slow and Start menu icons not highlighting after update

Can you do another trace recording while reproducing one of those issues ? May be another trace can give us more insights !

OK, here's what I did...

1. made a spurious change to a file in visual studio
2. started performance monitor and set it recording
3. in vs, right-clicked the file in the pending changes window and chose show changes
4. at around 17 seconds into the trace, the window appeared
5. after about 5 seconds (faster than usual, but still a lot slower than before) the contents appeared
6. stopped the recording

You can grab the file here.

The odd thing is that right now, the machine is behaving itself!

Try the tool Ed give you.

Also take a look at the events log and search if there is events (Errors or Waring) related to shadow volume copy.

Thanks to both of you. I've run the tool, but won't be restarting until I knock off work later. Not worth doing it now, as it usually behaves for a while after a restart anyway.

As for the event log, there are a few VSS errors in the Application log, but not many. They all seem to be of the form...

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Error calling a routine on the Shadow Copy Provider {b5946137-7b9f-4925-af80-51abd60b20d5}. Routine returned E_INVALIDARG. Routine details GetSnapshot({00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000},00000240983EB260). Operation: Get Shadow Copy PropertiesContext: Execution Context: Coordinator

There are generally two or three such errors together, but only once or twice a day, whereas the problem seems to be pretty much all the time.

On Monday there were 26 such events within about 20 minutes, but that seems to be a one-off.

The only other VSS-related events are ones that say "The VSS service is shutting down due to idle timeout" which come around once per hour.

Are we still sure that VSS is the problem? Does that last log I posted show the same thing? Don't want to waste your time barking up the wrong tree!

Thanks again for all the help. I'll see what happens after a restart.

To be sure that the problem comes from VSS, disable it for a day and see how your system behave.

I think the problem is not VSS in it self but another process or application using VSS. this why I asked you to disable all non MS services and application from auto-starting.

You can also filter on all VSS events in the event log, save the filtered log and share it with us, maybe we can identify the process trggering VSS !

I'm going to wait and see what happens when I restart after running the VSS fix program that Ed linked. I have disabled most[*] non-MS services, but didn't realise that I needed to restart the machine for it to have an effect.

I'll see how it behaves after all that, and try disabling VSS for a day afterwards. Don't want to try too much in one go, as I'd like to know what's causing it.

As I mentioned before, the only VSS events I could see were the two I mentioned, however, I have exported the filtered Application log, which you can see here. Be interested to know if you see anything in there.

Thanks again
[*] I didn't disable all non-MS services, as some are needed the whole time. I'm a software developer, and can't work without SQL Server for example. I disabled all the ones that aren't really essential, and I'll see if that helps. If I disable the essential ones, I won't be able to do enough with the machine to see if there is a problem.

Any update on this ?

Was just wondering whether it was worth posting or not yet. I switched on the machine earlier today for the first time since disabling those services, and it's not doing badly. It's had moments of grinding along, but is generally behaving itself.

However, as I said before, it often doesn't start misbehaving straight away, so I won't necessarily know for a day or two.

The only services I have left ticked in the msconfig box are K9 (an Internet filter, which shouldn't use VSS as far as I can see), ESET (anti-virus, ditto previous comment), JetBrains ETW Collector (which I'm sure I disabled), Macrium service (not sure why there is a service running for this, but it wouldn't surprise me if this used VSS), RealTek Audio service and Cicsco AnyConnect VPN service (neither of which are likely to use VSS).

I will probably disable Macrium and see if that helps. I use it for taking nightly disk images, but can survive for a day without it.

I'll keep you posted.

OK, I disabled Macrium and restarted, and it's still doing it. The only non-MS services left in msconfig are K9, ESET and VisualSVN which I forgot to disable, but seems very unlikely to be the cause. Can't see how any of these three would use VSS, but I could well be wrong.

Any ideas? What do I do now?

Thanks again