Windows explorer response time

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We have a networked drive that contains 40,000 plus small image files (<200K) on it which is added to constantly by a number of users. Our problem is that when viewing with windows explorer it often freezes up or stops responding (explorer) when scrolling the window or accessing files on it. This particularly occurs when new files are being added. Is there any setting I can make to speed up its response time and stop it from freezing or not responding.

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Are you using the view that shows thumbnails? I would think that is very processor-intensive. If not…

As a test, turn off your antivirus software. (Mine tends to bog down with huge ZIP files.) If this speeds up the viewing, you can try to configure it to scan more selectively, but how to do this will vary from product to product.

If that’s not it, perhaps you will need to put fewer files in each folder or revamp your network infrastructure.

There also are other file managers that might be more lightweight, particularly if you don’t need a web-page-like browsing interface.

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No I don’t view as thumbnails just the files. Unfortunately I cannot turn turn off or alter parameters of my antivirus software as it is configured by the serevre and is locked down. However, I did find an article on altering the MaxCachedIcons size in the registry and will try that.

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Yes that does sound a bit drastic and I will leave that one for now. See above reply for my comment on MaxCached Icons size. Also have found another article on changing the NtfsMftZonedReservation registry setting which stops explorer from automatically updating the file timestamps whenever a folder is traversed.

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We run OfficeScan, and it allows “fine tuning” of the excluded file list by computername. In version 3.54, no wildcards were allowed, but entire folders can be excluded. If you’re certain there will only be image files in there, it might be a worthwhile risk to run. I’m not sure if wildcards have been added in version 5.02, we just got it recently.

Not sure what you’re running, but thought I’d mention it.

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Can we backup a little? What kind of hardware for the server? What versions of server & desktop OS are you running – including service pack? What network speed? How many clients on the network concurrently? Are all 40K files in the same folder? Is the server a file & print server only? If not, what other server applications are running?

Joe

--Joe

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I found the following in a newsletter for XP but it may also apply to Win2K.

***Windows XP can be slow when trying to access a folder full of media files (i.e. AVI/MPEG/DAT). Although I can’t find anything on Microsoft’s Web site that addresses this problem, it was still brought to our attention that there is a fix. Now, this fix will require you to edit your registry so I will STRONGLY refer you to Microsoft Knowledge Base Article – Q322755 for the steps on how to back up your registry (REMEMBER: registry tweaking can be tricky!). Click the Start button, go to the Run command, type “Regedit,” and click OK. Once inside the Registry Editor, click Edit, then Find. In the “Find What” field, type in “{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}” (without the quotes) and click Find Next. Once the Registry Editor finds this folder, you will see that inside it is a folder named InProcServer32. Click on this folder, and delete both registry keys inside. Now, just exit the Registry Editor and reboot. With any luck, this will get rid of this sluggishness for you Windows XP users. ***

Before doing this I would defrag and run CHKDSK

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Whoa! Searching for the first part of that CLSID, 87D62D94, in Google suggests that there is a problem with a Shell Extension for Windows XP (shmedia.dll) and two methods for working around this issue, both of which sound fairly drastic to me. The first is to remove the Shell Extension from the AVI file handlers, which I think is what the above post describes. If your RegEdit search leads to this key in the registry:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTSystemFileAssociations.avishellexPropertyHandler

The second is to remove the CLSID for shmedia.dll by deleting this key in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesCLSID{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}InProcServer32

That would invalidate the first reference, so that probably is an even less desirable approach.

Any chance that MS would have (quietly) fixed this issue in one of its service packs??

P.S. I don’t have shmedia.dll on my Windows 2000 SP2 system.

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