Edit:

All,

OK, the mystery has been solved. PcDad was correct in his thinking about windows explorer scanning inside of zip archive files when you click on a directory. Between Friday and Saturday I was downloading several zip archives that contained an unusually large number of files (one had ~90,000 files, and the other ~30,000 files). Wherever these files are placed, they cause the slowdown when you click on that directory. Apparently, when you open a directory by moving between directories using the arrow keys windows explorer does NOT automatically scan the contents of all the zip archive files. Thanks for all the great ideas. It is a relief that nothing was actually wrong with the HD or system.

Tomboy

-=-=-=-=-

Hi,

I need some ideas on what might have happened to my main system (WXP Pro) this past weekend. Sometime between Friday and Saturday, windows explorer started to use 99%+ CPU resources when I clicked on certain subdirectories containing several large files (100 MB+/each). It also takes ~5 minutes for the directory listing to finally come up. Suspecting a virus or trojan, I restored my system from a known good backup. However, this did not change the behavior of the system. I have also noticed that other programs (like ECDC 5.3) also experience this slowdown and high CPU usage when dragging and dropping files from the same directories. Interestingly, once the directory finally displays things seem to work at normal speed again. Scanning both windows (norton windoctor) and the drive (norton disk doctor and chkdsk) for errors fails to find any problems. None-the-less, I am suspecting impending hard drive failure and have purchased a replacement drive today just in case (OfficeMax, WD 40 GB 7200 rpm, $19.95 after rebate :-).

One other strange thing is that I can click on the root directory of the drive and use the arrow keys to move down to the same subdirectory that causes problems when I click on it. In this case, the directory listing comes up immediately as normal. I am really stumped on this one. Has anyone seen this kind of behavior before?

Tomboy

Are they avi or graphic files that windows is trying to index or preview?
Dave

Dave,

They are mostly zip and rar archives (though there might be a few stray graphics files in the mix, it happens to be my DOWNLOAD directory). I also had the problem when I copied several of the big files to another previously empty directory. Clicking on this new directory containing just 3 large zip files gave the same slowdown and high CPU usage.

Tomboy

Edit:

New information, I just clicked on a freshly burned CD containing the same 3 large files above and experienced the same slowdown and high CPU usage. Again, keying down from the previous drive using the down arrow gave an instantaneous display of the directory. Also, I deleted all of the files from the download directory and clicking the now empty directory gave an instantaneous response. At this point nothing else seems affected.

Tomboy

Possibly your AV scanning the archives before allowing access to them?? Have heard of this b4..try unchecking the option to scan inside archives and see if it helps...Just a thought... B)

My download directory is slow to display as well

Takes about 30 seconds sometimes

Does contain a lot of rars ans zips though

I keep meaning to sort it out ;)

Thanks for the ideas guys, however, remember that this is a dramatic change in behavior for my system. On Friday, clicking on the same directories full of zips and rars gave an instantaneous response. Since Saturday, the same action takes minutes.

Tomboy

Have you tried to open these archived files to make sure the data is not corrupted? YOu may wantt o try to ppen them and make sure something hasn't happened tot he files themselves to cause your problem.

Just a thought.

tomboy;


are you running xp sp1?
known fact their is an explorer resource issue when something is enabled in your graphics options..

to fix this, right click your desktop to get to the display properties; then click on Effects, and look for the radio button that says "use the following transition effects for menus and tooltips"
Make sure you UNCHECK that button, click ok, apply, and ok..you may have to reboot, and after that, your explorer issue should be much better...

If that doesnt help, then it could be hard drive hell...

good luck!

wase4711

Glad you got it sorted...the good thing is, now you have an extra HD :D