Windows Takes Forever to Open My Computer

[Guest]

Whenever I try to open My Computer (or anything else where it will show
access to all of my drives) Windows displays the animated flashlight for
searching and it takes forever to show the contents of My Computer. Any ideas
as to the cause and how to fix? THANKS!

 

[Guest]

Have you done a Defragment of your drive(s) recently? Fragmentation could be
a cause of a slow computer.

You might wish to check your available RAM / memory to determine if you
should install some more.

 

[Guest]

Whenever I try to open My Computer (or anything else where it will show
access to all of my drives) Windows displays the animated flashlight for
searching and it takes forever to show the contents of My Computer. Any ideas
as to the cause and how to fix? THANKS!

Well, Tracker22 advice is good but you need to Run Disk clean Up before
Defrag.
But First how much Disk Space you have left on the Hard Drive?, How much RAM
you have on your System Less than 512 with hungry Application you will suffer.
Do you have Anti-Virus and anti-spyware and they up2date, also you scan your
system regularly?.
If you confident your system malwares free and Virus free then Run Disk
Clean Up then defrag in safe mode and open the run command and type in:
sfc /scannow click [OK] and let it run.
Note the space between the sfc_/
HTH.
nass

 

[Mark F.]

Whenever I try to open My Computer (or anything else where it will show
access to all of my drives) Windows displays the animated flashlight for
searching and it takes forever to show the contents of My Computer. Any
ideas
as to the cause and how to fix? THANKS!

This is usually due to:
Internet temp files cache is full
Cookies folder is full
Not enough free space on the hard drive for the page file system
Unnecessary programs are installed
The hard drive's file system is badly fragmented

Go to 'Start' >> Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools >> Disk Cleanup.
Run this cleanup tool.

You don't have to store everything on the desktop. It's a virtual folder
designed for shortcut links to frequently used programs. Try deleting any
shortcuts that you rarely or never use.

Same thing with the 'My Documents' folder. Huge numbers of files and folders
in this virtual folder can cause slowdowns too.

See here for more info:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/northrup_restoreperf.mspx

If you are not comfortable doing this yourself, seek the advice of a local
expert. Such a person could have your PC running faster and more efficiently
in a couple of hours.

HTH
Mark

 

[WTC]

Read the following article and see if anything applies for your system.

Long delay before files appear in My Computer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/819017

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Have you done a Defragment of your drive(s) recently? Fragmentation
could be a cause of a slow computer.

Very unlikely, especially since he doesn't say the computer is generally
slow, but slow only when opening My Computer.

You might wish to check your available RAM / memory to determine if
you should install some more.

No, available RAM is *not* an issue. Although insufficient RAM can cause
lots of paging activity and slow down the computer, that's very different
from how much RAM is *available*.

In fact, little or no RAM should be available at any point in time. Wanting
to minimize the amount of memory Windows uses is a counterproductive desire.
Windows is designed to use all, or nearly all, of your memory, all the time,
and that's good not bad. Free memory is wasted memory. You paid for it all
and shouldn't want to see any of it wasted.

Windows works hard to find a use for all the memory you have all the time.
For example if your apps don't need some of it, it will use that part for
caching, then give it back when your apps later need it. In this way Windows
keeps all your memory working for you all the time.

Wemgem should read the Microsoft article WTC pointed him to. He will likely
find the solution to his problem there.