Using Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit When navigating directories of large numbers of images and video files, Windows 7 insists on reading the meta data on every file. When dealing with directories of over a thousand files, it can take up to 10 minutes for Windows Explorer to finish loading the directory. Even if I set the directory to only display in "list" mode, it still insists on pre-reading the meta data. I've set the "Optimize this folder:" setting for the directories to "General Items". This also didn't help. I initialy thought this might be some search engine indexing ____, that never managed to store the indexed information somewhere. I used to leave the window open over night, thinking it might need time to correctly store this theoreticly indexed data somewhere and swapping the view to another directory before it had completed storing it, caused it to dump everything it had stored by that point. This proved not to be the case. I tried uninstalling the search engine from Windows 7. This also made no change. Since this issue only ever seems to be with directoried filled with files that have meta data, I can only assume that the insane delay can only be the system reading meta data. How can I turn this feature off? If I can't turn it off, how do I make Windows 7 maintain this information so it doesn't need to relaod it every time I ask to see the contents of the directory. I'm getting tired of using dos to access thes directories, as it's processing time is still instant.

Hibiki Thanks for the insight on this issue, I've always wondered why the directories were always taking so long to read. I thought it was the OS doing it's indexing or my server performance, since all my images are stored in server shares. Most people here would reply that this question belongs in another forum, but I hope someone might reply with a solution to the metadata reading, if that is truely what might be happening. Thanks for the question.

Hibiki, and JK, I have experienced the same type of issues at various instances through the years, and it has led me to temporarily disable one thing after another at different times, just trying to find out what the hold up was... in the end, I determined that it was my Symantec Endpoint Protection program, the anti-mal-everything program that was massively slowing down all large file transfers... I now run MSSysinternals Process Explorer (free!) at all times, and it shows everything running at all times, how much process power is being spent on every program... and best of all, you can right-click and temporarily suspend, or kill out-right, anything that is running... and you are right, it is the large media files consisting of audio/video/graphics(pics) that take the longest... Now, don't get me wrong, I have used Symantec for years, and I am stil using it, partly because it does allow me such great control... Whenever I hit a slowdown, I can fall back on MSSysinternals free tools to eliminate the problem... my indexing is disabled in Services, and I use a different search program, and a different defrag program, and a different indexing program, and I turn them all off from systools on the taskbar, to keep them from using too much power... you might check your anti-malware also, the indexing, other things like defrag, disk scans, graphics programs, anything that spreads itself out and might notice when files are being transfered... check the Task Schedular, it can give clues... also, check Task Manager, it will show what is running when you are trying to do a file transfer... that's what Process Explorer is, a super version of Task Manager... Task Manager is reachable by right-clicking the taskbar, choose Task Manager, and left-click it to open it... open up Task Manager(taskman) before you start the file transfer, move the taskman window to the side, start the file transfer, and once it is running, or trying to run, go to the taskman window, and you can scroll and sort to find out what is causing the slowdown... at the top of the taskman window, you will see Tabs, click Processes Tab, and then you should see a list of programs running at that moment... at the top of each list, you should see some headings, like 'Image Name', 'User Name', 'CPU', and 'MemUsage'...(or something like that, I am looking at XPSP3Pro right now...), click on 'CPU'... this will sort everything by CPU usage... if you see 00's under 'CPU', click 'CPU' again, and now you should see higher percentage numbers, and these are the programs that are using the most CPU power st that time... if you are doing a file transfer, then you should see 'explorer.exe' near the top of the list... that is normal, that SHOULD be there, explorer.exe is Windows shell, which IS Windows... but you may see some thing else that is using up a lot of CPU power, and maybe it should not even be running... this is where taskman, and especially things like Process Explorer, really come into play... well, it is now 7AM, and time for me to get some sleep... good luck!, and I will try to check back later today, it will probably be this afternoon or evening...

Most people here would reply that this question belongs in another forum, ... I was unable to find a category that would fit this question. I would be very appreciated, if someone can indicate the correct forum category.

I was unable to find a category that would fit this question. I would be very appreciated, if someone can indicate the correct forum category. The correct spot would be a forum for Windows 7, not a forum for Windows Home Server. Note: I've moved this thread of discussion to a Windows 7 forum...I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)

thank you.

Hibiki, and JK, I have experienced the same type of issues at various instances through the years, and it has led me to temporarily disable one thing after another at different times, just trying to find out what the hold up was... in the end, I determined that it was my Symantec Endpoint Protection program, the anti-mal-everything program that was massively slowing down all large file transfers... I now run MSSysinternals Process Explorer (free!) at all times, and it shows everything running at all times, how much process power is being spent on every program... and best of all, you can right-click and temporarily suspend, or kill out-right, anything that is running... and you are right, it is the large media files consisting of audio/video/graphics(pics) that take the longest... This is a new issue with Windows 7 (not that I ever used windows Vista). My VM of Windows XP within Win 7, loads the relevant directories just as fast as they did when Windows XP was the base operating system. I temporarily disabled Symantec End-Point. This didn't make any difference. Can anyone else suggest anything?