Problem with file properties

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Hi. A week or so ago I noticed an annoying problem started to occur when I ‘Right Click’ on a file and select properties. The time taken to generate the properties window, for some reason, has become seemingly proportional to the file size. By this I mean a small file of a few KB returns the properties instantly while one of say 100 MB takes about 45 seconds. It used to be more or less instant.
Now the plot thickens. It only occurs on some file types and seems to be mainly image and video files while other files such as my SWP file of nearly 200 MB return instant properties.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you – Michael.

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Hi. The files aren’t on a network unfortunately. My computer is a ‘stand alone’ nuts n bolts job that has served me well for years. I would use system restore but in my infinite wisdom I disabled it based on advice I was given. The problem itself is not the end of the world but is annoying none the less as I use the function frequently for quick info on files I use in video editing which tend to be large. Thanks for a reply and more are welcome from anyone with any clues – Michael

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This gets said so often, I hope it doesn’t bore you: have you run a virus/trojan check with your CURRENT antivirus program? If so, and you don’t already have them, you ought to check AdAware (the free one), and Spybot S & D for any bad guys that could have crept into your system. Also, a scandisk and/or a defrag would be good things to do. If you’ve already done all these things, post back and let’s all keep thinking…..

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Evening, me again……….In short, I have done, or had previously done, all of the things suggested. The defrag suggestion initially made me think ‘bingo’ but unfortunately no dice. A suggestion was made to me about changes to DMA settings but there have been none. I guess I have 2 options from here. I’ll probably just go with it and see if I can nut it out because in the scale of things it’s not a huge deal, just an annoyance. I have an image file of the disk but it is over 12 months old and after that period of time it’s almost like going back to a reinstall with the way I use this machine. If anyone wants to persue this, please feel free but if not, devote the time to serious issues. Thanks for your help, much appreciated – Michael

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Michael,

If you have the Disk Cleanup utility (and I believe that’s part of ME) in your Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools folder, run it and clean out your Temporary Internet folder. This can often revive a sluggish up a system.

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Michael,

If you have the Disk Cleanup utility (and I believe that’s part of ME) in your Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools folder, run it and clean out your Temporary Internet folder. This can often revive a sluggish up a system.

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Michael,

Just stumbled on this looking for something else and remembered your post. FWIW………

Slow right click
Firstly, too many fonts installed can cause this problem (in the many hundreds). Delete those weird and wonderful ones (but don’t delete tahome or marlett).
Also, McAfee VirusScan has been noted to cause this problem. Their instructions are as follows:
Open Regedit and navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SOFTWARE
NETWORK ASSOCIATES
TVD
SHARED COMPONENTS
ON ACCESS SCANNER
McSHIELD
CONFIGURATION

Double-click on the ScannerThreadTimeout and change the value to eight f ‘s (ffffffff)

Close and restart VShield.

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Hi Doc, Al and Cowboy……me yet again ! Firstly, thanks for continuing to pursue this annoyance. Doc, thanks for the thoughts and as it stands I have 123 fonts installed which is actually too many for my needs but I have not added any, to my knowledge, for many moons. I keep the drives on this machine pretty clean with regular clean-ups and defrags (Al made me think I may have been overdue for a defrag, which I did to be sure but no dice). Scandisk shows no problems. Also, I don’t use and have never had McAfee virus software. I think I’ll give this a little longer to see if any more thoughts come in but I guess I’m looking at backing up my files and going back to a really old image file. Never mind, learnt one thing………….image more frequently !!! Just thought it may have been a prob that someone might say ‘ bingo, I know that one ‘. Thanks people – Michael

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Morning Michael,

One last gasp to avoid the restoration of that old image.

Try reinstalling Windows over top of the existing installation. This, of course, make the rather large assumption that you have a copy of the OS on it’s own disk and NOT an OEM System Restore disk set. If you have the Windows ME disk, just pop it in and run through the instllation process. This will often cleanup any corrupted files and get things running smoothly again. If it doesn’t work, you can always restore the old image. I’m sure a lot of work has been done in the last 12 months so it might be worth the shot to save the setup you have now. But only you can decide that.

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One note on this…make sure you have either disabled your Antivirus software while doing this, or else uninstall that software completely.
I just went through this with daughter’s upgrade ME, and had to completely (for ease of re-booting,etc) ALL of her Norton software (SystemWorks and Firewall) and after the ‘dirty’ install of ME (connectivity problems – don’t ask!), and getting the updates from windowsupdate.com, I then re-installed her SystemWorks and then her Firewall.
Just my .

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Evening punters…..Doc, I never even considered installing over the top of the current OS yet I have the original OS disk. Have never done it before as all my past problems were full blown and always led to a full reinstall. You are right in saying that much work has gone into this machine in the last 12 months and while it can all be done again, time does become a factor. I think I’ll give it a shot as it seems to make the most sense and at least gives me a fighting chance at keeping what I have and solving the silly problem. What’s the worst that can happen……..( don’t answer that ). I’ll back up my data first of course. Ilona, thanks for the thoughts, obviously very fresh in your mind. I would have disabled the virus software but now, after reading your input I think I’ll remove virus, firewall and Norton Util’s completely before going ahead. All easily put back in place. I won’t be able to do all this for a week or two due to time, work, family and all the normal blah blahs but I will let you know the outcome. Thanks again everyone, been very helpful and above all, kept common sense in the picture.

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Michael,

Glad we could provide at least a glimmer of hope. Have to thank Lonnie for her input. I overlooked that “little” issue and it could have caused problems with the over-the-top installation. After removing the firewall and Norton stuff the worst case (I’ll stick my neck out here) is that it won’t help.

Post back after you get the time to do the reinstall and let us know how it went. Good or bad, I would like to know how you made out. I’ll keep an for your post.

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…awwww, it was nuttin’. After reading all of the posts to this thread, it just dawned on me that any anti-virus/firewall software would put a major ‘damper’ on a dirty install .
Hope everything works out ok…

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Good evening all. Good news, got it sorted out, well, for the most part anyway. Tried reinstalling which went very smoothly but did not fix the problem. Banged head for a while, scratched head for a while and decided to format the drive and wind back to the old image and work forward. As I built the old image back up to include all my current apps etc checked for the problem along each step. Bingo !! Problem occurred again after installing a software bundle for my camera. The bundle has 6 or 7 individual apps and I have not had time yet to narrow it down but hey, the upshot is I have at least found the source. I checked for driver updates and found none at the manufacturers site so I assume the driver is current. Guess I’ll uninstall the lot and load them back in one at a time to find the offending critter and take it up with the company. Once again, thanks everyone for the valuable thoughts and suggestions. I genuinely appreciate it. Ciao for now – Michael

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Michael,

Nice work discovering what program was causing the problem. It’s unfortunate that you had to revert to the old image, but sometimes a fresh start is tho only way to root out a problem. Now that you know what program it is, and combine that with the info from your previous post about it seemingly only affecting image and video files, I’d say that there must be a setting in one of those “6 or 7 individual apps” that is causing the issue.

If you can disable the apps individually it might help to further isolate the problem. Something in that software is most likely hijacking the image files to catalogue them or to prepare them for use by the camera’s utilities. Check your file associations and see if the software has associated itself with the file types you are having trouble with. Or perhaps remove that software bundle from the startup menu and only run it when you attach your camera to the PC.

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Hi all, thought the least I could do was ‘put this puppy to bed’ now with a final outcome. Basically, having gone through months of testing this, deleting that, updating the other etc etc looking for what I 100% thought could only be a software problem/clash I found it all came down to an intermittently troublesome CPU. Have a new CPU running now and everything is back to normal and I could not be happier. Many thanks once again to all those who offered very reasonable suggestions and help. Michael.

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Ain’t it funny how the hardware’s the last place we look, and it often should be the second place !!! Glad it all worked out. And thanks for posting back and lettin’ us know. We’re all a little wiser for it.

Reply | Quote

Ain’t it funny how the hardware’s the last place we look, and it often should be the second place !!! Glad it all worked out. And thanks for posting back and lettin’ us know. We’re all a little wiser for it.

Reply | Quote

Hi all, thought the least I could do was ‘put this puppy to bed’ now with a final outcome. Basically, having gone through months of testing this, deleting that, updating the other etc etc looking for what I 100% thought could only be a software problem/clash I found it all came down to an intermittently troublesome CPU. Have a new CPU running now and everything is back to normal and I could not be happier. Many thanks once again to all those who offered very reasonable suggestions and help. Michael.

Reply | Quote

Michael,

Nice work discovering what program was causing the problem. It’s unfortunate that you had to revert to the old image, but sometimes a fresh start is tho only way to root out a problem. Now that you know what program it is, and combine that with the info from your previous post about it seemingly only affecting image and video files, I’d say that there must be a setting in one of those “6 or 7 individual apps” that is causing the issue.

If you can disable the apps individually it might help to further isolate the problem. Something in that software is most likely hijacking the image files to catalogue them or to prepare them for use by the camera’s utilities. Check your file associations and see if the software has associated itself with the file types you are having trouble with. Or perhaps remove that software bundle from the startup menu and only run it when you attach your camera to the PC.

Reply | Quote

…awwww, it was nuttin’. After reading all of the posts to this thread, it just dawned on me that any anti-virus/firewall software would put a major ‘damper’ on a dirty install .
Hope everything works out ok…

Reply | Quote

Michael,

Glad we could provide at least a glimmer of hope. Have to thank Lonnie for her input. I overlooked that “little” issue and it could have caused problems with the over-the-top installation. After removing the firewall and Norton stuff the worst case (I’ll stick my neck out here) is that it won’t help.

Post back after you get the time to do the reinstall and let us know how it went. Good or bad, I would like to know how you made out. I’ll keep an for your post.

Reply | Quote

Evening punters…..Doc, I never even considered installing over the top of the current OS yet I have the original OS disk. Have never done it before as all my past problems were full blown and always led to a full reinstall. You are right in saying that much work has gone into this machine in the last 12 months and while it can all be done again, time does become a factor. I think I’ll give it a shot as it seems to make the most sense and at least gives me a fighting chance at keeping what I have and solving the silly problem. What’s the worst that can happen……..( don’t answer that ). I’ll back up my data first of course. Ilona, thanks for the thoughts, obviously very fresh in your mind. I would have disabled the virus software but now, after reading your input I think I’ll remove virus, firewall and Norton Util’s completely before going ahead. All easily put back in place. I won’t be able to do all this for a week or two due to time, work, family and all the normal blah blahs but I will let you know the outcome. Thanks again everyone, been very helpful and above all, kept common sense in the picture.

Reply | Quote

One note on this…make sure you have either disabled your Antivirus software while doing this, or else uninstall that software completely.
I just went through this with daughter’s upgrade ME, and had to completely (for ease of re-booting,etc) ALL of her Norton software (SystemWorks and Firewall) and after the ‘dirty’ install of ME (connectivity problems – don’t ask!), and getting the updates from windowsupdate.com, I then re-installed her SystemWorks and then her Firewall.
Just my .

Reply | Quote

Morning Michael,

One last gasp to avoid the restoration of that old image.

Try reinstalling Windows over top of the existing installation. This, of course, make the rather large assumption that you have a copy of the OS on it’s own disk and NOT an OEM System Restore disk set. If you have the Windows ME disk, just pop it in and run through the instllation process. This will often cleanup any corrupted files and get things running smoothly again. If it doesn’t work, you can always restore the old image. I’m sure a lot of work has been done in the last 12 months so it might be worth the shot to save the setup you have now. But only you can decide that.

Reply | Quote

Hi Doc, Al and Cowboy……me yet again ! Firstly, thanks for continuing to pursue this annoyance. Doc, thanks for the thoughts and as it stands I have 123 fonts installed which is actually too many for my needs but I have not added any, to my knowledge, for many moons. I keep the drives on this machine pretty clean with regular clean-ups and defrags (Al made me think I may have been overdue for a defrag, which I did to be sure but no dice). Scandisk shows no problems. Also, I don’t use and have never had McAfee virus software. I think I’ll give this a little longer to see if any more thoughts come in but I guess I’m looking at backing up my files and going back to a really old image file. Never mind, learnt one thing………….image more frequently !!! Just thought it may have been a prob that someone might say ‘ bingo, I know that one ‘. Thanks people – Michael

Reply | Quote

Michael,

Just stumbled on this looking for something else and remembered your post. FWIW………

Slow right click
Firstly, too many fonts installed can cause this problem (in the many hundreds). Delete those weird and wonderful ones (but don’t delete tahome or marlett).
Also, McAfee VirusScan has been noted to cause this problem. Their instructions are as follows:
Open Regedit and navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SOFTWARE
NETWORK ASSOCIATES
TVD
SHARED COMPONENTS
ON ACCESS SCANNER
McSHIELD
CONFIGURATION

Double-click on the ScannerThreadTimeout and change the value to eight f ‘s (ffffffff)

Close and restart VShield.

Reply | Quote

Evening, me again……….In short, I have done, or had previously done, all of the things suggested. The defrag suggestion initially made me think ‘bingo’ but unfortunately no dice. A suggestion was made to me about changes to DMA settings but there have been none. I guess I have 2 options from here. I’ll probably just go with it and see if I can nut it out because in the scale of things it’s not a huge deal, just an annoyance. I have an image file of the disk but it is over 12 months old and after that period of time it’s almost like going back to a reinstall with the way I use this machine. If anyone wants to persue this, please feel free but if not, devote the time to serious issues. Thanks for your help, much appreciated – Michael

Reply | Quote

This gets said so often, I hope it doesn’t bore you: have you run a virus/trojan check with your CURRENT antivirus program? If so, and you don’t already have them, you ought to check AdAware (the free one), and Spybot S & D for any bad guys that could have crept into your system. Also, a scandisk and/or a defrag would be good things to do. If you’ve already done all these things, post back and let’s all keep thinking…..

Reply | Quote

Hi. The files aren’t on a network unfortunately. My computer is a ‘stand alone’ nuts n bolts job that has served me well for years. I would use system restore but in my infinite wisdom I disabled it based on advice I was given. The problem itself is not the end of the world but is annoying none the less as I use the function frequently for quick info on files I use in video editing which tend to be large. Thanks for a reply and more are welcome from anyone with any clues – Michael

Reply | Quote