Folder struggles to open

NotAGolf · 20 Feb 2010 at 09:20

Hi all.

Got a bit of a weird problem. I've got a folder which has loads of films in (all avi's). Up until recently it had about 200-250 files in, each one being about 1gb in size. Back then I could open up the folder fine and it would function like normal. However, I recently added a few more (say another 50) and now when I try to open the folder it takes a couple of minutes to open.

Any ideas what's going on?

My computer isn't exactly fast (C2D @2.6, 2GB, 1TB WD Green) but it shouldn't struggle to open a folder! I'm still on XP 32bit as well which probably doesn't help. Is there some kind of size limitation XP has for a max folder size? The drive is still half empty so there's plenty of space. I've defragged both my drives (folder in question is on the 1TB which is only a few weeks old so hopefully shouldn't be failing).

Anything I can try to sort this?
Thanks.

ejr22 · 20 Feb 2010 at 09:49

I don't know any specific figures for the limitations of whatever file system you are using but it is obviously going to take longer to open a folder containing 1 file than one containing 1,000,000. I know you haven't got that many but perhaps you have reached a tipping point where it begins to struggle?

What is struggling though? Is it the O/S, HDD, RAM, CPU? I don't know?! Perhaps a combination of all of the above. When you are trying to open the folder have you looked at the performance monitor to see which system resource is being used the most?

To try and speed things up you could try creating a few folders within the main one and categorizing your collection (alphabetical would probably be easiest). Or perhaps changing the view of the files in the folder - i.e. if you have it set to view as icons then change it to list.

Something else to consider is that it might be the first signs of you HDD failing? It might be worth backing-up and running a few diagnostics to check the health of the drive just to be on the safe side.

marc2003 · 20 Feb 2010 at 13:50

you can disable media previews.

regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll

that should sort it. if you want to turn previews back on again, run that command without the /u

SiriusB · 20 Feb 2010 at 14:00

Try moving some of those files to a different folder and see if performance improves.

If I had 250-300 movies files in one folder, I would have categorized them by now anyway.

mrk · 20 Feb 2010 at 14:19

Do you have MS Security Essentials?

Disable it and retry browsing the same folder.

NotAGolf · 24 Feb 2010 at 20:22

Hi all. Sorry for the delay. I could have sworn I did a reply thanking everyone but I seem to have messed that up! Oh well!

I used marc's method of: regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll

This worked and the folder now opens in a fraction of a second like it should. However, I quite like the preview feature in some locations, and for some reason my mp3 player wont display the artist/title info unless I enabled the above command before copying files onto it which is a real PITA.

Is there anyway to apply this command to a single folder? I don't really want to categorise as I find having them loose is quite handy. I've tried moving them to a different folder and it's still slow so I think I can rule out a dodgy/fragmented disk (hopefully!)

Thanks again.