Windows 8 - Accessing drive and folders excessive lag time opening.

[Night Prowler]

I have a Windows 8 Pro install. Opening a drive with a lot of files and folders takes some time to completly open. Opening one of the folders it loads part of the window, displays the progress bar in the folder location. If I try to go down further in the window it displayd 'not responding' in the heared of thye open window. It does eventually open. I have set all the folder customizations to 'Documents' and selected subfolders too.

It is better but still lags in some folders?

TIA...

[Harrison H.]

What type of drive is it? External or internal? USB 2.0, USB 3.0, eSata, etc? 5400 RPM, 7200 RPM?

[+Elі Subscriber²]

Are these files on an external drive? If so perhaps it's because the hd is going to sleep?

[Night Prowler]

It's a RAID-0 set (2TB). I have a dual booting system, and this is the Windows 8 side. This doesn't happen on the Windows 7 side.

If I open the drive there are only about 5 main folders. It tries to open, I open task manager, and explorer says 'not responding'. Takes about 30 seconds to open the drive, and display the folders.

I'm wondering if it could be the antimalware or the virus checker?

[Ice_Blue]

Try this:

Temporarily disable "real-time protection" in Windows Defender.

If you can live with it off, the response time for displaying folder contents will improve.

You can determine the impact that Defender has by viewing its processor usage while opening folders containing large amounts of files. Especially zip and rar files.

[Night Prowler]

I noticed in task manager that the antimalware kind of goes nuts when some folders are opened.

[ArialBlue]

I noticed in task manager that the antimalware kind of goes nuts when some folders are opened.

I disabled the ani-malware stuff. That thing was trashing CPU and HD.

The issue where File Explorer simply displays the green loading bar but NEVER loads the damn directory for some reason is reminiscent of Windows 7, if not earlier. It is simply one of those things that Microsoft "overlooked".

To open such troublesome folders, use CMD / Powershell. File Explorer will never open them for you.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Windows Defender should have nothing to do with this, though third-party A/V software can have this effect.

What you're describing does not sound like a File Explorer issue, but more likely a broken add-in. What desktop apps do you have installed? There's probably one that installs a BHO into File Explorer and is hanging navigations, or something along those lines.

[ArialBlue]

Windows Defender should have nothing to do with this, though third-party A/V software can have this effect.

What you're describing does not sound like a File Explorer issue, but more likely a broken add-in. What desktop apps do you have installed? There's probably one that installs a BHO into File Explorer and is hanging navigations, or something along those lines.

Interesting - do BHO load in Safe Mode?

[farmeunit]

Windows Defender should have nothing to do with this, though third-party A/V software can have this effect.

What you're describing does not sound like a File Explorer issue, but more likely a broken add-in. What desktop apps do you have installed? There's probably one that installs a BHO into File Explorer and is hanging navigations, or something along those lines.

Because it can't be buggy? MSE and Defender have had many issues with slowness over the years from my experience. I haven't used Win 8 much yet, but I wouldn't discount it. Not to mention he said it went a little crazy.

[Dashel]

I can also attest to the same behavior, its odd. No AV/addons.

[Ice_Blue]

The problem is Windows Defender.

Even in a fresh install, with no third party programs installed, I experience this behaviour when opening any folder with a fair amount (100+) of files. Especially if the folder contains a lot of compressed files.

When I disable real-time protection in Defender, the problem goes away completely.

[Buendia]

Yes, because it scans all of the archives or setup files. I've just put such folders in the exclusion list of Windows Defender.

[f0rk_b0mb]

If I'm reading correctly, your talking about the green bar of death, Right? Yeah, that's been a problem since Vista.

[Dashel]

Yup, same GBOD. It kills me that they still didn't fix the UAC profile lag either.

[Buendia]

Yup, same GBOD. It kills me that they still didn't fix the UAC profile lag either.

If you're talking about the delay between launching a program and displaying the UAC dialog,

I find that it has been optimized so UAC appears faster than on Windows 7.

[ManMountain]

Had a similar issue with Windows 7 and MSE, corrected by adding explorer.exe to the exclusion list.

[Dashel]

If you're talking about the delay between launching a program and displaying the UAC dialog,

I find that it has been optimized so UAC appears faster than on Windows 7.

Speaking more to the lag after you accept the UAC prompt when browsing another User's directory.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Speaking more to the lag after you accept the UAC prompt when browsing another User's directory.

Do you mean after the UAC prompt, when it's re-ACL'ing a large directory structure to give you permissions? That really doesn't have anything to do with UAC...

[Dashel]

Do you mean after the UAC prompt, when it's re-ACL'ing a large directory structure to give you permissions? That really doesn't have anything to do with UAC...

Yes, after the prompt. Then what does it have to do with? The issue first appeared with Vista/UAC (Maybe not UAC specifically, but a similar dialog box) and exhibits the same GBOD that rarely seems to be predicated by how many files are in a user profile (a new profile can be just a slow as an old one).