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Is it possible to give a hint to Explorer.exe that it's dealing with slow drive, for example, something like a network share? Explorer should go easy with it, i.e. not constantly looking up desktop.ini attributes.
mile
Posted 2011-08-22T12:56:50.400
Reputation: 11
1
The most important thing you can do to speed up Explorer is to disable thumnails. This limits any "automatic" access to polling the filesystem.
To do so, run regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll and regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll in a command prompt (Start->All Programs->Accessories).
In addition, you might also want to increase your filesystem RAM cache so that XP doesn't have to keep calling the filesystem for files. You can do with with the SysInternals utility CacheSet.
And if you're paranoid, please back up. Windows XP is going the way of the dinosaur and behaves kind of like one.
digitxp
Posted 2011-08-22T12:56:50.400
Reputation: 13 502
FWIW, Explorer doesn't poll the filesystem; it uses the change notification API. – user1686 – 2011-08-26T09:02:06.343
No matter what, it will eventually cause a filesysyem read though… – digitxp – 2011-08-26T12:46:41.830
0
Limiting 3rd party shell extensions and real time anti malware will also go a long way toward increasing Explorer's performance.
afrazier
Posted 2011-08-22T12:56:50.400
Reputation: 21 316
Explorer does not use
– user1686 – 2011-08-22T13:05:11.640Desktop.iniunless the folder has the "read-only" and/or "system" flags, specifically for network performance reasons. (Not sure about equivalent flags for file metadata lookup, though.)