Explorer becoming intolerably slow

[terrypin]

I'm using Win XP Home (SP1) on this Athlon 1800 PC (1 GB). Simple operations like moving up a folder tree are beginning to take forever. This is a problem that I've raised before over the years in various newsgroups and forums. Sometimes it sort of gets back to tolerable speed, other times like now it's glacial. Inconsistent too. Sometimes, once I've managed to open a large folder (30 secs isn't unusual), subsequently opening its subfolders is at the normal brisk speed.

Taking it as read that I do all the 'obvious' stuff (like defragmenting, regular deletion of temporary files, etc), does anyone have any thoughts on a possible cause please?

I've used FileMon and RegMon occasionally to look for clues, but no real success. There's so much info presented by these tools...

From time to time I've wondered whether maybe Norton Unerase (part of SystemWorks 2002) could be implicated, but don't want to uninstall it unless I have some evidence, as it's sometimes quite handy when I've accidentally deleted an important file and the Recycle Bin hasn't caught it.

Any advice would be much appreciated please.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Steve R Jones]

Seek out and delete the hidden file called IconCache.db file from your profile directory (usually /Documents and Settings/Username/Local Settings/Application Data).

[BipolarBill]

If there's a CD in your drive, remove it. Windows may be indexing it.

Many people don't even know about Event Viewer. You should check it's logs to see if there are any clues there.

[naptownman]

What about spyware? How much headroom is left on the hard drive?

[terrypin]

Thanks all, appreciate the suggestions.

Steve: OK, duly deleted. I'll report back if any significant improvement observed. Vaguely recall there's some sort of size setting for this file, or am I confusing it with some other file?

BipolarBill: No CD or DVD in drive. But, FWIW, I do occasionally get an odd quirk. Some programs (the main one is called Macro Express) intermitently refuse to work until I do put a disk into a drive, reporting "There is no disk in drive H:" or word to that effect. Had another program (whose name I've forgotten) give identical message a few days ago. Probably totally unrelated to my performance issue, but I mention it in context of your post.

naptownman: Regular clean bill of health from Spybot and Adware. Free space OK on all main partitions.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[BipolarBill]

Good point. The PC may indeed be overrun with malware.

Have you scanned for bugs?

[BipolarBill]

OK - try changing the CD drive letter in Disk Management. Look in Control Panel > Admin Tools > Computer Management.

[Midknyte]

spybot and adaware are old news. get something better.
Antivirus/Antispy

Why are you still running SP1? SP2 has been out for over 3 years.

Norton System works sucks up some ram. that might be part of the problem.