Why is Windows file explorer so slow?
Why is Windows file explorer so slow?
It seems to relate to how Windows interprets files beyond just their icons. On my machine, icons appear almost immediately, while music and video files take a bit longer. This difference is linked to the metadata and additional information each file carries. Even though you might not see all 305 file details options, Windows still processes that data if it exists. I suspect Total Commander skips this step, which explains its speed.
Did you swap out your motherboard or CPU without resetting Windows? This approach sometimes leads to file manager issues and slow performance.
The main problem is that Windows Explorer and Search are so sluggish because they no longer just display your files. They keep forcing a thorough check of each file—analyzing metadata, creating thumbnails, running security scans, and hashing data. Shortcut-heavy folders are especially problematic since they test both links and the actual files. This issue intensifies dramatically in network or NAS folders, turning what should be simple IOPS into a massive performance crisis. Even high-speed connections can fail under this constant load of repeated operations.
It looks like others have mentioned similar issues, and I’ve definitely observed a shift in this pattern when the cache size was reduced. On the downside, the performance on the MS side is quite poor. With a 6TB mechanical drive, it kept constantly seeking access to read metadata for music files, which effectively turned off the hard drives' sleep mode since they weren’t needed. It’s frustrating because nobody seems to care about the already stored metadata. I guess I managed to resolve it myself—though I’m not sure how (maybe a WMP setting?).
I rely heavily on Void Tools Everything search, likely occupying about 75% of my file explorer tasks. It performs remarkably quickly—searching over 15 million items across four local drives and four NAS shares in under a second. https://www.voidtools.com/ The 1.5 alpha version brings many valuable features. https://www.voidtools.com/everything-1.5a/ The latest release remains active on the forums. https://www.voidtools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9787
For those who prefer not to focus on thumbnails or use the search feature, the open-source 7-zip is a solid choice (https://www.7-zip.org). It performs exceptionally quickly compared to other search tools while maintaining excellent performance. Its clean design allows it to function even in the Windows Recovery Environment. You might find a solution to enable thumbnails later, and envisioning a version of Everything search built on top of 7-zip could be interesting.
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