Windows hangs on clicking/copying large MKV file

Question

I have a 2.9GB MKV file, unzipped from a .RAR archive, that causes explorer.exe to take up 100% CPU when I select it by single clicking. Also, when I attempt to copy and paste it, the copy dialog hangs on the "Discovering files" phase until I end the process. It is also the only video file in the folder that lacks a thumbnail image from the video; it is simply a VLC icon. However, it plays normally in the player.

I suspect somehow the file info got corrupted and Windows keeps trying to read it, but I don't know how or why, or how to fix it. I downloaded it again from the source and extracted it again, didn't fix it. After moving via cut and paste (which took unusually long), the problem persists. I would think the size would not be an issue, as it is neither the largest nor the smallest file in the directory.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

My hunch is that it has to do with thumbnail generation. Try renaming the file. You can also try deleting the thumbs.db file in that directory (it is marked as both hidden and system) and see if it clears up a corrupted thumbnail. Or install the K-Lite Codec Pack and disable thumbnail generation for .mkv during the install.

Note that there are a lot of weird rules for thumbnail generation, including not generating for files greater than a certain size in addition to files by type (i.e. .mkv) and by location (i.e. local hard disk or network server). K-Lite gives you access to some of these settings during install.