Open/save file dialog takes a long time to open in Windows

This is driving me up the wall every time it happens :-)

As the title states, clicking on open, save, browse on basically any windows application makes said application stall and not respond to message for a long time (minutes). The dialog finally appears later.

In practice, there seems to be a blocking operation on the UI thread, which eventually times out or succeeds without any notification of what the problem might be.

This only happens every few hours, after which the dialog behaves normally.

I've looked around quite extensively but I can't find any working solution to this problem.

Specs: Win 8.1 on a 2013 iMac via Bootcamp.

Network operations (like refreshing network drives) seem not to block the UI-thread and reading the HFS "Macintosh HD" seems not to be the issue.

Is this a known problem and what is its solution?
Is there a way of debugging it/identifying what exactly is going on?

Sklivvz

Posted 2013-12-29T18:03:54.857

Reputation: 161

@EbenezerSklivvze normally you'd use a filter – barlop – 2015-12-31T02:14:47.523

Run ProcessMonitor, open the dialog and when the dialog is shown, go to ProcMon again, store te data as PML, zip the PML and upload the zip (skydrive, dropbox) and post a link here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645

– magicandre1981 – 2013-12-29T18:26:56.470

There are 300k lines of log in the time it takes from the moment the dialog appears to when the UI is responsive again. – Sklivvz – 2013-12-29T20:01:05.410

1I know, that's why you should give me that file. – magicandre1981 – 2013-12-29T20:15:25.833

Surely, it's one of the installed shell extensions. – Alexey Ivanov – 2013-12-30T06:28:46.930

Answers

It could be a shell extension, but in the past when I've seen this issue it was due to the shell trying and failing (timing out) to read a drive. In the example I have it was an aging 3.5" floppy drive, but I doubt that's your issue in the iMac. Nevertheless, the possibility remains that it's an issue trying to read information about one or more storage devices. In the case of the floppy drive it was easy to diagnose because I could hear the drive grinding when it happened.

hemp

Posted 2013-12-29T18:03:54.857

Reputation: 330

For me it was enough to disable the non present A: drive in BIOS. Of course that included a restart as well, but I'm sure the A: drive was the problem.

guest

Posted 2013-12-29T18:03:54.857

Reputation: 1

I know this is an old thread, but can't hurt to add my issue as well. I had the same problem, and as others stated, the problem was because of failing or timing out reading a drive. I was doing some installs, mounting using a virtual drive and had forgotten to disable one after I was finished. Once I unmounted, the file dialog opened quick for me again.

Goose

Posted 2013-12-29T18:03:54.857

Reputation: 133