Faster folder access, please

Hello

I have discovered that one thing that makes Windows 10 feel slower to me than e.g. Windows 7 is the fact that Windows shows an hourglass (i.e. that round blue thingie) for about 0.5 to 1 second every time I move into or out of a folder. This means that if I work on a folder tree, it takes a lot of waiting before I reach the innermost folder.

I'm sure entering a folder after double clicking it (or single clicking and pressing Enter) was instantaneous on Windows 7, so why the wait on Windows 10? Moving up in the folder tree (by clicking that "folder up" button in Explorer) also shows the hourglass and the delay. These aren't large folders with weird files in them.

At first I thought it might be Windows Search, but I disabled that and the problem remains. Completely exiting both Malwarebytes and Kaspersky antivirus also has no effect -- the delay remains.

What else is there?

For some reason, opening a folder directly from the Desktop does not have the hourglass delay, but all folders further down the tree do have the delay. (There is a slight delay when opening a folder directly from the Desktop, and it remains even if I disable minimize/maximise animation, but the cursor doesn't show an hourglass, so it is not an hourglass type of delay.)

I have a reasonably fast computer (Ryzen 5) with a reasonably fast drive (M.2).

Thanks
Samuel

If you goto a folder deal down then close it and reopen is it then fast? How much ram have you got and have you checked the drive for errors and run trim?

Samuria said:

If you go to a folder deal down then close it and reopen, is it then fast?

No. The only time a folder opens fast is if I open it directly from the Desktop, or when I open it via a shortcut directly from the Desktop. Oddly, if I make a shortcut to a subfolder, put the shortcut on the Desktop, and double-click it, it opens the folder instantly, but if I move that shortcut elsewhere and double-click it, the delay is there again.

How much RAM have you got and have you checked the drive for errors and run trim?

16 GB in a single stick. The SSD is quite new... about 200 reboots thus far, with less than 400 hours of usage. Trim is enabled on the drive (as per fsutil behaviour query).

dalchina said:

[Search is] stated as disabled (for test purposes presumably) in first post.

Well, on much older computers, disabling Windows Search was one way of speeding up the computer, so I've gotten used to doing my searching using third-party apps.

This is off-topic, but: I don't think I'll miss Windows Search. There was a time when I thought indexed searching was really impressive, but... I rarely search for stuff in locations where the combination of performing indexed searches *and* examining the search results would be faster than simply using e.g. Agent Ransack (and examining the search results while the search is running). In fact, most of the time that I search for content, I know in what folder it is. I do use indexed searching of plain text files in a few very, very specific locations, but for that I use Redtree's Wilbur, which works fine if the indexes are smaller than 100 MB. Windows' built-in search was useful and user-friendly under Windows 95.

It's interesting that e.g. Free Commander is much faster in this respect, and XYplorer faster again.

Yes, there is no lag with Explorer++, for example.

Did you do a check disk (chkdsk c: /f)?

Thanks everyone, but after a few days something else broke, and I had to reinstall Windows entirely. The issue seems to be gone.