Windows 7 Slow Folders (MIGHT apply to 10 and vista...) and the folly of tech support.

J

Juicekrew2

Just observations on a typical tech, over-teching in all the wrong places.

There is a simple fix to my issue but it's how I get there that shows how blind I was, to simplicity. Kinda like the length of this post...


So, I was one of the MANY people that had the annoying problem of clicking on a folder (thisw one was located on 1 of my NAS boxes) and waiting for 2 minutes while it 'Discovered' the folder contents. EVERYTIME I WENT IN AND OUT OR REFRESHED IT! Grrrr indeed.


Windows 7 Ent.


But wait, I have 2 other Win 7 boxes (1 Ent the other Pro) that don't exhibit this behaviour. So what gives?

My 2 windows 10 boxes (Pro and Home) have no issue either.

Check the **** settings. All the same AFAICS.


OK, let me try to index the dri...ah. Can't do that with 7 anymore. Blast.

The 'update' to allow you to do this on Win 7 didn't appear to be available anymore.


So the usual posts come into play. 'Check that you've hit the customise for "general items" checkbox on the folder.

*Laugh*. But wait. We ALL make simple oversights so the joke may be on me...

Nope. That was checked from day one access on this computer.


I must add, the initial lofty attitude was due to me having worked with computers (SysAdmin, Service Desk et al) for over 20 years. Not a simple scoff at a perceived 'Plebite' oversight. As I said, we all do it, and my solution was kinda simple and in that ball park.


Ok, what's different about this computer? Indexing? Nope, that's running the same as the others, and I can't even index that location.

I tried. Simple UNC. SUBST, Junction and the new one I forget)

Event Viewer isn't giving me anything new, but it's also not complaining about anything out of the ordinary. At least for Event viewer...


Ok, turn off the search indexer. Restart. No joy.

743 Video files in the folder still being discovered everytime I enter the folder. Even going elsewhere and 'Backing' into it.

My System had the memory of a goldfish

I'd switched from Details to list sooo many times.

Check forums. Typical MSFT support responses:

Run SFC

Apply windows updates (That should be caveated after they recently of this post completely broke Workgroup filesharing, yet again)

Post logs yadda yadda yadda.

All the same **** stuff we do. Overkill, but essential steps. Just not for me in this situation.


This plagued me for a couple of years as I resigned to this system being quirky.

Until a week ago or so...

I wanted to show a mini-doc I had created, to friend and copied it from a laptop to my video store.

Oh here we go again, but this time I got even more annoyed than before. (people come to me for computer advice so this made me look like I worked in 'Joe Blow's computer shop'. Not good).


After my friend left I sat and stared at the 'screen.

'RIGHT! What's actually going on?' I thought.


Windows is trying to 'discover' items. Why? It's not indexed.

Swicth to list. pfft. Still loading the items.

Switch to Extra large Thumbnails. BANG! There!

Anything to do with having to create a new Thumbs.db?

Granted, it was now trying to render them but I could scroll through the list..

Back to Details. Slow build, from the start yet again.

Thumbnails. All there, rendering as we go.


OK, so ordinarily it slowly populates the explorer window as it 'finds' them, giving the count in the 'Unspecified' line at the top.

Hold on...unspecified? I said folder type of 'General items' what does Unspecified mean?

Right-click space in the folder. Sort by is Modified. Group. That has nothing selected. Not even "(none)".

Select "(None)" and NOW go back to Details.

Immediately ALL showing. Now count, no nothing. WTH?

Restart PC. try again. Immediate display. Traverse folder into folder into folder, back out, straight to it. Now working correctly.


I had tried the 'Grouping' option on a differently filled folder, and yes, grouping clumped\grouped items together but not in a way I found useful. Plus, switching back to details on that folder still exhibited the issue..


Yet another case of one thing working for one person, yet another not working for..you get the picture.

Some people can have this resolved by disabling AV software apparently (Not surprised, don't get me started on the my product's performance killing applications. When it's not deciding to switch portions of itself off that is)


However, what was so disappointing was the fact that I hadn't seen this chain of events, anywhere. hence the tome of a post.

I did the standard troubleshooting in 5 minutes, tops. Then went from 0-100 immediately.

Is there a registry or component problem with networking? Is there a problem with Graphics? What is the NAS sending back to this PC? What are the allowed ciphers and protocols on this box? What's the difference between this machine and the others?


And all it took was stopping for a minute. Thinking about what it was trying to do here, which it could do almost everywhere else, and trying something different based on those thoughts.


Now, let me go and dive back into filesharing on legacy Os's. What's that, I hear? I haven't re-enabled enabled TLS 1.0 and 56 bit encryption yet?...

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