Why so long to delete a file in XP?

[Bazzer Smith]

When I delete a file it takes far longer than expected
even for a small 1/2 meg file.
Indeed I went to delete an entry of my favourites and it
seemed to take forever.

If I plan on deleteing a folder containing a DVD back up,
will I need a time machine to come back in about 2 million
tears time?

It is much much facter on the machine (w98) I bought 8 years
ago, Cyrix MII 300 processor 66 Mhz bus. The new machine
should be 30 times faster not 100 times slower,

 

[Haggis]

When I delete a file it takes far longer than expected
even for a small 1/2 meg file.
Indeed I went to delete an entry of my favourites and it
seemed to take forever.

If I plan on deleteing a folder containing a DVD back up,
will I need a time machine to come back in about 2 million
tears time?

It is much much facter on the machine (w98) I bought 8 years
ago, Cyrix MII 300 processor 66 Mhz bus. The new machine
should be 30 times faster not 100 times slower,

scandisk / defrag and report back :>

 

[Bazzer Smith]

scandisk / defrag and report back :>

Just ran scandisk (chkdsk) and then deleted a newly created 4 KB file,
it took about 30 seconds to delete
I don't think defrag is necessary its a new system and
has 23gig free, enough room for 6 million 4KB files.

 

[Malke]

When I delete a file it takes far longer than expected
even for a small 1/2 meg file.
Indeed I went to delete an entry of my favourites and it
seemed to take forever.

If I plan on deleteing a folder containing a DVD back up,
will I need a time machine to come back in about 2 million
tears time?

It is much much facter on the machine (w98) I bought 8 years
ago, Cyrix MII 300 processor 66 Mhz bus. The new machine
should be 30 times faster not 100 times slower,

Then something is wrong with your computer. How did you do the deletion?
If you used the right-click/delete way, check your context menu entries
with the free ShellExView.

See:

Right-click is slow or weird behavior caused by context menu handlers -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/slowrightclick.htm

Manage the context-menu entries for folders, drives and Namespace
objects - http://windowsxp.mvps.org/context_folders.htm

If you didn't use the right-click method, then make sure you've emptied
out your temporary files. Start>Run>cleanmgr [enter]

To provide more focused troubleshooting, we would need more information
about your system, what you've already done to troubleshoot, what your
virus/malware status is (and if you think the box is clean, what
programs and versions of same you used to determine this). Another key
question in troubleshooting is to ask yourself, "what changed between
the time things worked and the time they didn't?".

You can also look in Event Viewer for clues.
Start>Run>eventvwr.msc [enter]

Malke

 

[Claude Schneegans]

When I delete a file it takes far longer than expected.

Do you have Norton Protected Recycle Bin installed?
I also find that file deleting is far longer than apparently necessary, but I suppose
the Norton Recycle Bin is responsible, since it has to copy the file some where.

 

[Bill Sharpe]

Do you have Norton Protected Recycle Bin installed?
I also find that file deleting is far longer than apparently necessary,
but I suppose
the Norton Recycle Bin is responsible, since it has to copy the file
some where.

Norton gets blamed for a lot of things, but I've got their Recycle Bin
intalled and files get deleted in much less than 30 seconds, unless I'm
deleting 100's of them at once (which happens once in a while).

Bill

 

[Bazzer Smith]

Norton gets blamed for a lot of things, but I've got their Recycle Bin
intalled and files get deleted in much less than 30 seconds, unless I'm
deleting 100's of them at once (which happens once in a while).

30 seconds is way to long to delete oneentry off the favourites menu.
60,000,000,000 instructions to delete a a small file? You have to be joking.

 

[Claude Schneegans]

30 seconds is way to long to delete oneentry off the favourites menu.

I agree it is very long, however he said "much less than 30 seconds".
Depends how long is
"much less than 30 sec".

In my case, it may take about 5 sec, which may be considered much less
than 30, but is still
quite long for such a simple operation.

 

[Bill Sharpe]

I agree it is very long, however he said "much less than 30 seconds".
Depends how long is
"much less than 30 sec".

In my case, it may take about 5 sec, which may be considered much less
than 30, but is still
quite long for such a simple operation.

I certainly haven't timed it, but it's on the order or a second or two
for deleting a single file -- not a problem! The point was that I cannot
blame Norton for a delay to delete a file (or move it to the protected
recycle bin). I've been using Norton since DOS days and have had very
few problems with it. Peter Norton used to live a couple blocks from me!

Bill

Bill

Bill

 

[Claude Schneegans]

Peter Norton used to live a couple blocks from me!

This is a pretty good reference indeed, however, it has been a long time
since Peter Norton
has nothing to do with anything called "Norton" nowadays ;-)

 

[Bazzer Smith]

When I delete a file it takes far longer than expected
even for a small 1/2 meg file.
Indeed I went to delete an entry of my favourites and it
seemed to take forever.

If I plan on deleteing a folder containing a DVD back up,
will I need a time machine to come back in about 2 million
tears time?

It is much much facter on the machine (w98) I bought 8 years
ago, Cyrix MII 300 processor 66 Mhz bus. The new machine
should be 30 times faster not 100 times slower,

Actually emptying the recycle bin seems to have rectified the matter
somewhat.