Windows Explorer

[Guest]

I am a photographer and have alot of image files on my computer. When I open
Windows Explorer and then click on a folder containing Jpeg files, the system
is very slow to display all of the file icons on the left of the file name.
(This is in detail view). It takes about a second for each icon to diplsy
befor explorer goes to the next one.

Most of the time explorer will reach a point where it will stop displaying
icons and then hang. At that point Windows Explorer will just quit, i.e.
disappear. At other times it will display a message "explorer encountered a
problem and needs to close."

I'm clueless. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks,
Dan

 

[Malke]

I am a photographer and have alot of image files on my computer. When
I open Windows Explorer and then click on a folder containing Jpeg
files, the system is very slow to display all of the file icons on the
left of the file name. (This is in detail view). It takes about a
second for each icon to diplsy befor explorer goes to the next one.

Most of the time explorer will reach a point where it will stop
displaying icons and then hang. At that point Windows Explorer will
just quit, i.e. disappear. At other times it will display a message
"explorer encountered a problem and needs to close."

I'm clueless. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks,
Dan

We're missing two important pieces of information: 1) how much RAM does
your machine have; and 2) how many image files is "a lot"?

You should have a minimum of 256MB of RAM to run XP, and for someone who
is doing a lot of image editing, a gig would probably be around right.
I assume you have a fairly fast processor.

Additionally, ask yourself if you really need to have all those image
files on the hard drive. If you do, then you probably should be looking
for some sort of third-party image management software. And I certainly
hope you are backing up those important files regularly.

Malke

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your reply. My machine is a 2.8 gighertz and has 1 gig memory. My
disk drives are in a raid 0 setup.

The problem also occurs when I go to open files with applications. For
example if I use photoshop to open files, the same thing happens. I click on
the folder and the files are slow to list. Sometimes it hangs and sometimes
the application will quit, i.e. disappear. Thanks,
Dan

 

[Malke]

Thanks for your reply. My machine is a 2.8 gighertz and has 1 gig
memory. My disk drives are in a raid 0 setup.

The problem also occurs when I go to open files with applications.
For example if I use photoshop to open files, the same thing happens.
I click on the folder and the files are slow to list. Sometimes it
hangs and sometimes the application will quit, i.e. disappear. Thanks,
Dan

A couple of observations:

There was an interesting article a while ago on Tom's Hardware showing
that - contrary to Geek Beliefs - RAID 0 did not produce faster results
(this was looked at from a gaming perspective, I believe).
Additionally, RAID 0 doubles your chances of losing your data. Lose one
drive and you've lost them both. So you might want to think about doing
that a bit differently.

You still didn't say how many files is "a lot", so my suggestion about
possibly taking some of the files off the hard drive stands. If you
have 2,000 files and the application (or Explorer) has to search
through all 2,000 of them (all large files, too) to find the one you
want, it's going to take a while. Maybe it's time to think about
organizing the files differently.

Malke

 

[Guest]

The directory in question has 43 jpeg files - each file about 2-3 megabyte.
My hardrive is organized into folders with each folder containing an "event"
or a series of photos. usually not more than 100 per folder.

I have about 100 or so of these folders on my hard drive. Windows explorer
does fine displaying these folders. It when I go to open folders that it
can't seem to display the files.

I have to admit I'm a little surprised that you suggest finding an alternate
means of organizing this number of files - perhaps I have misled you by using
the term "alot"?