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> … Windows Explorer runs extremely slowly  …

Hi EezeePC. “runs extremely slowly” is somewhat generic, and since I could say the same thing about my system I felt qualified to toss my tuppence into the ring.

Microsoft is a Sales & Marketing company and I thing it is very good at sales & marketing.

Microsoft is not a Software company and I thing it is very poor at software.

So nowadays I am not surprised when (in Windows File Explorer) I navigate to a folder, key in “*.DOC” in the <F3> search box, and have time to wander off to the kitchen and pour another coffee before my screen is full.

I put this particular lethargy down to:

1. The data drive being encrypted with TrueCrypt and
2. The specific folder (being searched) being on a SUBSTituted drive.

I rather suspect that in order to locate each file, Explorer makes a succession of calls to the core of Windows, all the way up the folder tree to a physical file system, and at each step of the way asks the core to resolve the particular folder against the SUBST command, a hangover from my DOS days.

Now I am certain that you are not using a folder within a folder-tree on a SUBSTituted drive letter on an encrypted drive, but you can imagine all the redundant back-and-forth going on as each folder in the tree (which is to say, for each DOC file in the target folder) is being interrogated and un-mapped repeatedly. So you can see that, in my case, although my brain knows what is meant by “W:\Tripping\DrivingCanada\DrivingNewfoundland\DrivingBonavista\“, dumb-old Windows might be asking “What is this drive called “W:”?, and dumb-old Windows might be responding “Why, it’s actually “T:\Greaves\Admin\Domains\“, three times over for each file in “W:\Tripping\DrivingCanada\DrivingNewfoundland\DrivingBonavista\“, and thus three treks through “T:\Greaves\Admin\Domains\”” for each of those responses, and thus four times three calls to TrueCrypt to get the data from T:.

It all adds up.

Thus, I can offer a weird explanation of why MY system might be slow, and a different but similar messy situation might be going on in your system (just not with encryption and SUBSTituted drives).

As for “… caused by a recent update …” this could easily be the case, strengthened if you happened to note the general slowing-down starting within minutes of the latest update.

But consider too Microsoft’s habit of Things Overflowing. File Lists in applications used to be limited to Nine entries, defaulting to four entries (why?) and now raised to fifty entries (why?). At the human level we had to switch to a slower method (File, Open, Browse) once our file dropped off the File menu’s most-recently-used list.

A similar cascade can occur whenever Windows software exhausts a fixed-size table, or indeed any fixed-size resource. If a recent update brings in slightly larger DLLs, then there is less working memory for other applications, such as File Explorer, and some paging or data swapping can occur.

In short the reasons for the slowness are myriad, and perhaps your best bet is to see if you can isolate each of your reasons for the slowness.

For example, you suspect that the slowness is brought about by a recent update. Are you able to roll back to your previous version of Windows for an hour or two and see if the speed is improved?

Cheers
Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

[Chris Greaves]

Hi.

Some 15 years ago my password-protected Word2003/VBA utility library “UW.dot” would cause McAfee to vomit on one particular system

I knew that the code was clean, my colleague knew and trusted me, but we could not get UW.dot installed on his machine.

UW.dot was issued and installed successfully on the machines of all my clients across North America.

At that time I figured that one or more bytes in the password-protected tokenised UW.dot just happened to beat the odds and look like a virus signature – to McAfee on Tim’s system!

Cheers

Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Chris Greaves.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Chris Greaves.

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DrBonzo

“It seems weird seeing people say that you might be willing to take the risks without saying what they are.”

I agree. So I would ask you “What do you mean by risks (to you)?”

If you run a four-room twelve machines per room training centre, you are susceptible to a financial risk with each new version of Windows and/or Office, for your clients will insist that their people will be trained on Excel365″ or “Word2019”, even though the Introduction To Excel course uses only features found in Excel4.0.

If you provide paid training to your own clients, you are susceptible to temporal risk while you take fresh screen snapshots of every dialogue box in your training material and rebuild (and reprint, bind etc) each training manual.

Then you run the risk of alienating clients who are still using Office 2018/2017/2016/… or whatever.

If you are a VBA programmer you run risks such as having to upgrade your procedure libraries (“UW.dot”) to accommodate new features in the language. See for example “Declaring API functions in 64 bit Office” (https://www.jkp-ads.com/Articles/apideclarations.asp) which can involve extensive editing of your libraries and applications.

There is the temporal/fiscal risk of devoting your time to learning the quirks of the new version – menus change, shortcut keys change, and so on)

The list goes on.

I might add the risk of advancing to Office2019(say) and not knowing what might jump out and bite you! That is, risk of the unknown. That sort of risk leads to a further risk: Risk of NOT being able to roll back to your earlier version for whatever reason (Committed to training material, committed to changed program code).

I have no easy answers, but if you do have a specific type of risk in mind, making your own list of risks (or if you prefer, “fears”) will give you some real data on which you can act.

Cheers

Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

Hi NaNoNyMouse

“Niels Bohr … whether you believed in it or not”

Are you sure it wasn’t Heisenberg?

Cheers

Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

Hi bundaburra.

It has to be 1101st, on the grounds that the alphabetic suffix applies to the least significant digit, to wit, the digit “one”.

HTH

Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

“So what does my son do for a living? He’s a carpenter by trade and loves it.”

Well hello cmptrgy!
Send your son here, ASAP.
I have a slew of carpentry hobs here on the tip of the peninsula. Fourteen identified on my list so far.
Then I want the six existing windows in the house replaced with larger windows, and six extra windows put in.
Board and Lodging provided.
You son will think all his birthdays have come at once!
Cheers
Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

For all that Jon Rahm Rodríguez is a Spanish professional golfer, I’d like to see him duplicate the shot across the Golf of Mexico! (grin)

A fabulous (literally) shot.

I am not a golfer, never have been.

My interpretation of this shot is that Jon was aiming to get the ball past the hole, on a slight rise, to allow him to make the next shot downhill towards the hole. Is this correct?

I ask because the ball does seem to go past the hole, and then curve and get drawn by gravity into the hole.

 

Cheers

Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

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Myst

I use Podcast Addict on my LGK30 Android phone and can offer help in using it if you choose to try it.

The APK file I installed is “Podcast Addict_v4.10.3_apkpure.com.apk”

And https://apkpure.com/podcast-addict/com.bambuna.podcastaddict is probably the place to get it.

I d/l news from the Australian ABC, and news podcasts in French, Spanish, Italian and German from SBS(Sydney); Also Guardian Science (UK).

Cheers
Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

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Nathan Parker

“Avoiding getting your email address harvested means not telling it to other people, which is sort of counterproductive.”

I agree. Totally.

Ten years ago I began dropping all internet/email communication with people who CCd me with twenty others on emails. I especially disowned folks who thought that BCC was pointless, silly, over-reacting.

Two months ago my neighbour’s niece and husband came for a month-long visit. We chatted, agreed to exchange emails. We exchanged emails and the wave of spam hit.

Odd!

I retired 10 years ago and have greatly reduced email contacts, as you might imagine.

The truth is that I have no idea what or who “Brian” contacts, and even though he hasn’t CCd me on anything, I know that I am effectively connected with whoever he has connected with over the past twenty years.

Cheers

Chris

Moderator note: Edited for content

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

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Charlie, OscarCP

I hate to be a party-pooper (grin), but …

It was hilarious, but I am saddened that the three people in the car think that this is an amusing sitcom for their private entertainment.

I like to think that after my first guffaw of disbelief, I or any one of my Lounge fellows, would have politely set the lad straight, round about the time he removed the gas nozzle from the pump casing.

 

Think about it: Suppose the lad squeezes the trigger and pours volatile gasoline over a car?

Gas ignites, car burns, YOUR car burns, and then you’d be upset that YOUR car got damaged, and you’d claim that “you did nothing to deserve this”.

The operative phrase is “you did nothing”, and that would be why you deserved it.

 

It IS a hilarious situation, and who among us has not, at the very least, waited in line at a gas pump in a rental car, and then had to pull out and join another line-up because the filler cap is on the other side?

(signed) “Done worse /stupid things in my life” of Bonavista

Cheers

Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

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Charlie, Myst

FWIW I make heavy use of shortcuts and icons.

As an example, I use a batch file to load Word after first copying Normal.dot from a safe location and appending a target document (“calendar.doc”) to be opened.

I save myself a lot of hassle by editing (right-click, properties) the shortcut target and prefacing the target with “cmd.exe /c “, as this allows me to change the icon and as well to Pin To Taskbar as well as Pin To Start Menu.

Cheers

Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

[Chris Greaves]

Enough already with the reminiscing, or I will add my two-pennorth worth, and yes, I do mean pennies.

Try looking forward to tonight’s party:

Determine how many 8-bit bytes of disk storage you have tied up in MP3 music tracks, and translate that to 80-column punched cards (at 12*80 bits per card), then calculate (on your 370) how many fifteen-foot U-Haul trucks you would need to ferry your music to tonight’s party across town. Assume 10,000 punched cards in a carton 18″ by 15″ by 4″.

Cheers

Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Chris Greaves.

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wavy, Volkstoy

[Chris Greaves]

Indeed, a great article.

My two-cents worth on passwords:-

(1) Use a simple string but repeated. You need only memorize “vfr” to remember “vfrvfrvfrvfr”

(2) Use the name of a person, place, or thing that is relevant to the site, but change one letter. If your mother’s name was “CharleneRichards”, use “CharlemeRichards”. That the “M” and “N” keys are adjacent will help to fool a bystander.

(3) The point on 16- versus 4-digit PINs is taken, but if I were a gambling man I’d bet on a 4-digit pin every time. People will commit to the last four digits of their childhood phone number as a mnemonic when they won’t commit to a string like “7055475153342401”.

(4) Biometric passwords were fun. I was exposed to expenive biometric software that used the cadence of the typist as part of the scheme. This was easily mimicked in Word97/VBA using key-press events (KeyDown, KeyUp from memory)

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Chris Greaves.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Chris Greaves.

I have ***nothing*** on my desktop.

I have Nine items on my taskbar.

I have Seven items on the Start menu.

 

Mind you, I am blessed, for I am for the next few days, still using Win7HP.

Cheers

Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

To date, pretty well everything that has been said about Flash (in this thread) could be said about eighty-column punched cards. Or 2400-foot reels of tapes used for off-lining printing jobs.

True, back then there were not Security Issues – but yes! There were! Patching an object deck was not difficult on the IBM 1401, and one could sneak a tape out of the computer room.

The eighty-column punched cards served us well; we could carry a bootstrap loader in a shirt pocket; some of us used a pen-knife and matchbox of chards to save us the time walking across to the DP building to stand in line for a key-punch machine.

They had problems: A 1000-card deck, nudged off the edge of a desk, with no sequence numbers was a nightmare; a rogue tape drive made nonsense of the payroll tape at the speed of creased[sic] lightning.

I miss slide-rules, too, but today’s slide rule fits in my shirt pocket, takes photos, and plays podcasts from SBS in Sydney NSW.

And the legacy lives on: “BD” and “BM” are synonymous to me, it’s just that one uses a 12-4 punch while the other uses an 11-4 punch; that’s all.

For most of the folks responding here:-
“Say goodnight, punched cards. We hardly knew ye”

“Say goodnight, tape reels. We hardly knew ye”

“Say goodnight, tables of logarithms. We hardly knew ye”

Nostalgically, Chris

Unless you're in a hurry, just wait.

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SueW, Paul T