Long Delays in Explorer

[damianmitchell]

Hi...

I've got a laptop which I've just downgraded from Vista to XP. SP3 is installed, and I've let windows update do it's stuff...

The problem is I have a 500GB IDE drive attached to the laptop via USB2. this drive contains my MP3 collection. when I click on a folder in explorer, there is a 15 to 20 second delay (with eggtimer), before it will show the subfolders or files in the right hand pane.

To try and resolve this, I have:-

• Turned off indexing for this drive
  
• Turned off the on access file scanner of my anti virus (NOD32)
  
• Fiddled with the checkboxes in Folder Options / View
  

Now the interesting thing is, if I browse the folders with the open file option within winamp, then the delay isn't there, but the browsing function is part of explorer (is it not?)

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks in advance...

Damian

[Mijzelf]

Is it possible that you're just facing the spinup delay of the disk?

[damianmitchell]

No, it's definitely not drive spin up... For instance, I have a que of MP3's playing, I go to add some more to the play list and it pauses (music keeps playing)... Once it lets me see the folder, I can (sometimes) click on a couple more before it pauses again...

Here:-

is a video of the problem...

BTW, the big pause at the start, is me waiting for explorer to open.

Damian

[gosh]

Does it happen in safe mode? Make sure disk caching is enabled on the drive