Windows Explorer running slowly

I will attempt this on Sunday, New Zealand time as we are about to fly between countries. I will post the results when I get it done.

I used Shift-Restart to perform the recommended steps, will try with a USB drive as soon as I can. Apologies for the longer delay - international travel is not fun.

I cannot perform a good System Restore as the earliest restore point is at least one week after the symptoms started showing.

Startup repair came up with no issues.

Hi @BlackOwl

Windows Vista/ 7/8/8.1/10 keep a regular backup of the registry handy in case you need to overwrite a corrupted registry. By default, the RegIdleBackup task runs every 10 days, so that’s as far back as you would lose if you replaced the current registry with the automatically backed-up files. You can find the backed-up registry files in \Windows\System32\config\RegBack folder.


Please boot your computer with Windows Setup Media and from Windows Recovery Environment start the Command Prompt.

Please type below command into Command Prompt and press Enter key.

Code:

 Dir C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack

Above command will list files stored within RegBack folder and there file size, make sure files are not zero size if they are do not follow below instructions.



Please replace partition letter C: with Windows installed partition letter. When computer boots into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) environment the drive letter assign to Windows partition may not be C: drive letter because Windows 7, 8 , 8.1 and 10 creates a separate system partition when it's installed from scratch. The system partition contains boot files WinRE assigns the system partition the C: drive letter and the Windows installed partition will be assign any other drive letter usually D: drive letter is assign to Windows installed partition. The Bcdedit /enum | find "osdevice" command can be use to find out the drive letter of the Windows installed partition the output of the Bcdedit command is similar to this osdevice partition=D:. The drive letter after partition= is the drive letter of the Windows partition.

Please type below commands into Command Prompt and for each command you have typed press Enter key.

Code:

Ren  C:\windows\system32\config\SAM         SAM.BAK

Ren  C:\windows\system32\config\SYSTEM      SYSTEM.BAK

Ren  C:\windows\system32\config\SECURITY    SECURITY.BAK

Ren  C:\windows\system32\config\DEFAULT     DEFAULT.BAK

Ren  C:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE    SOFTWARE.BAK

 

Copy  C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\SAM         C:\windows\system32\config

Copy  C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\SYSTEM      C:\windows\system32\config

Copy  C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\SECURITY    C:\windows\system32\config

Copy  C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\DEFAULT     C:\windows\system32\config

Copy  C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack\SOFTWARE    C:\windows\system32\config

This procedure assumes that Windows Vista/7/8/8.1/10 is installed to the C:\ partition. Make sure to replace C:\ drive letter to the appropriate Windows OS installed partition drive letter if it is a different location.


Above commands renames the registry files at their existing location, and then copies the registry files from the RegBack folder to the C:\Windows\System32\Config folder.

My partner gave up and reinstalled Windows while keeping her personal files. The issue disappeared. I will keep this solution in mind in case the problem reappears. Thank you for your time and effort, apologies that it turned out to be unnecessary.

I'm glad to hear your issue has been resolved, thank you for letting us know that all is now well!