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Since today, I have a problem with opening picture files in my preferred picture editing software (Paint Shop Pro). This appears to be somehow related to how windows routes the opening request.
This occurs when I either try to open the files by double-clicking on them in the explorer, or by using "Open" in the picture preview. What happens then is that Windows waits for about 43 seconds, and only then reroutes the request to PSP, opening the picture. If I instead open the pictures directly from PSP or drag them into the window, they open almost instantly.
I am used to this happening occasionally. However, on those other occasions, a restart fixed the problem. Today, it persists even after I restarted the computer.
What is interesting is that it does not appear to be a resource problem either. I checked in the resource monitor, and CPU, RAM and Disk Speed are all well below their maximum. In fact, during the 43 seconds delay, there's barely any activity other than from what I have running in the background.
Another interesting thing here is that if I attempt to open two files, one after the other, then both files are getting opened after 43 seconds each, with the same delay in which I opened them in between. It's like windows is doing something with each file instead of opening them directly.
Also, I noticed that windows apparently takes approximately the same amount of time to display file icons for any types of files, be they executable, pictures, word files, or other types of documents.
Since my normal workflow is to browse through the pictures with the Preview on one screen and then open those that I want to edit using the "Open" option in the picture preview, this is greatly impeding on my work speed. If anyone has any ideas what causes this and how I could fix it, I'd be really grateful.