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Slow My Document's Folder

Ok, I have never ran into this problem before and have not been able to find an answer anywhere. Maybe someone has seen this issue before..! My system runs great, everything is quick, no errors, average resources between 80-90%, 256 megs memory, PIII 450, Abit MB, blah, blah, blah! No other folders give me any issues, but the My Document's Folder is slower than anyone would care to imagine. If you explore/browse any other folder, everything works fine, real fast, nice...but go into My Document's and it's unbearable. I realize reinstalling will fix the problem but not really an option, too much work in my case, I would rather live without the My Documents folder than that. I have resorted to just not using it for much of anything. I have cleared the folder completely, defragged, reg fix from dos prompt, checked all my system files....I really now don't care, just want to know why. I don't use active desktop. I have no special settings on the Documents folder. I can move it to my C: or D: and get the same result. It's just plain slow, it might take the system say 10 seconds just to open the root of it even if there is no files in it. Any other folder opens somewhere in under a second. Thanks for any insight, I am puzzled, looked all over MSDN, newsgroups, etc... for an answer with no luck.

Shannon Harmon

nfroio

Hi Shannon,

Have you tried to change the Location fo the "My Documents" Folder.

I am not sure if it will help, but maybe there is just a bad sector on the C: drive and it just happens to be right where that folder is stored, seeing as everything else on your system is hunky-dory.

The folder can be moved anywhere on you system and the new location updated in this Registry key.

1. Using Regedit open the key below, listed are all the special folders Windows uses.

2. Note the current location of the folder you want to move, and then using explorer move the folder to the new location.

3. Edit the value in the key below for the folder you moved to reflect the new directory location.

Note: Log off, or restart Windows for the changes to take effect.

Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders]

Just a thought.

nfroio

PCGuru

Have had similar once, turned out to be a duplicate key in the registry was causing the problem. Have you downloaded and run the latest version of "regclean" from MS Downloads site. May fix, may not. I believe that in the end I had to mahually remove all pointers from the registry pointing to "My Documents" folder and created a new folder which I called "letters" or something. Was a while ago now, but like yourself I just got fed up.

Cheers,
Guru

sharmon

ASKER

Nfroio,

If you noticed in my post, I have stated that I have moved it from my C: Drive to my D: Drive (Two physically different drives), without any success. Also, you can just right click on the documents folder on your desktop, goto properties and move it from there without directly editing your registry and effects are immediate...

Although I appreciate your post, unfortunately it doesn't help me at all. Take care, btw: Any more ideas? I sure am stuck on this one.....

Shannon Harmon

sharmon

ASKER

Guru,

I have ran the latest regclean, which didn't help. I will try a manual remove in the registry and recreate it myself and see if that helps. I haven't checked the registry for dupe entries yet...sounds viable though, I'll let you know...thanks.

Shannon Harmon

nfroio

S,

hehe, sorry, almost the end of the day, will check around and get back to you....
HowzBout Guru's suggestions?

n_sleepy_froio

Asta Cu

Perhaps you have file synchronization actions going on with document(s) in that folder using OLE types of interfaces?

---
Perhaps some program(s) being used relative to that folder is not giving up resources and is creating memory leaks... this may add more insight into how to trap/check:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q259/1/61.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0
---

jjcontact

Someone here was fixed up by reducing the number of files in the folder. There is an article I can find that explains why it happens, but the upshot is to has to do with a directory >32K. Try moving half the files to another folder and see if that fixes it. If you'd like to see that article I can find it.

sharmon

ASKER

JJContact,

Doesn't matter if there are no files in the directory it still does the same thing.......very weird.....

Shannon Harmon

Asta Cu

Do you view all files including hidden files? Just to ensure that hidden files in that directory aren't a problem.

sharmon

ASKER

Astaec,

Yes, I view all files including hidden. There are no hidden files in the directory.

On another note, I was trying some the suggestions last night. Without success I might add:) But, I can tell you one more thing that might help might not...

I can take a directory that I have all my clipart in. Make it the path of the My Documents folder and it will slow to a crawl. (There is about 8,000 files in the directory structure.) Now, the second I change the My Documents folder not to point to that directory, the folder is super fast again. It doesn't make much sense. Again, I can make the My Documents folder point to a folder with no files in it and it slows down very much. The system must have something it does when you open the My Documents link that I cannot figure out. For anyone that doesn't understand what I mean by pointing the My Documents folder somewhere else, just right click your My Documents link on the desktop, goto properties and you will see that you can move it there, or of course you could manually do it via a registry edit. Anyhow, still trying...there has to be an answer. Take care, thanks for everyone's suggestions so far.

Shannon Harmon

jjcontact

Try extracting a new Mydocs.dll with System File Checker to C:\window\System in case yours is corrupt.

Asta Cu

This is quite interesting indeed, especially since you see a performance impact addressing this folder even if it is empty. I've asked a friend to look in here, though not sure if he will have an opportunity to check this out and help. These types of issues are perplexing, somehow logic should flow and this one just seems to defy logic.

Asta

dew_associates

Thanks for the invitation Asta!

Shannon, two areas I would check immediately would be:

1. Are you running any anti-virus that checks for macro problems, or

2. Antivirus that is set to scan the My Documents directory?

Dennis

sharmon

ASKER

Ok, have tried all suggestions up to this point and nothing has helped. I did the MyDocs.dll restore, nothing. Have McAfee Virus Scan, but it's not running, and had the problem before the installation of the Virus software. I have seen antivirus slow down a system, but this is not the case here, especially since it's not running:) Anyhow, I am still lost. I'll leave the question up until everyone looses interest in it...I have no clue where else to look. I have resorted to just not using the my documents folder. Very weird problem. I welcome anyone's ideas, I'll try whatever ya think might work...but it seems as if I have tried everything. Thanks for everything so far.

Shannon Harmon

dew_associates

Shannon, have you tried running any disk tools to see of there may be a problem on the drive?

What did you find when you check the registry?

How about temp files and other clutter or a damaged document or documents?

sharmon

ASKER

Dew,

Yeah, I have done scandisk, Norton Utils 2k, nothing out of the normal in the registry. I keep my temp files directory pretty much clear all the time, no damaged docs, doesn't matter if there are no docs in the dir at all. I have moved the path from my c: to my d: and back multiple times without any speed improvements. Both drives are 20gig WD UDMA 66 drives...I don't know.....???

Shannon Harmon

Again, just to let you know incase you didn't fully read the above posts (god knows I wouldn't, too many). It directly has something to do with that folder being the target folder for documents. I can make any folder the target and it will slow down tremendously. If I take the real c:\my documents folder and have it not be the target for the My Documents in the registry, it magically becomes lightning fast again, this is really screwed up.

Thanks again.

PCGuru

Are you running MS Outlook 97, 98 or 2000 by any chance? Just an idea forming.

Cheers,
Guru

sharmon

ASKER

Outlook 2000 - What's the idea? :)

Shannon Harmon

PCGuru

Go to tools/options/journal and make sure *everything* is unchecked. That is the original *space filler*, even before viruses got the hang of it :-)

Cheers,
Guru

PCGuru

Also, go to Control Panel and disable *Find Fast*.

Cheers,
Guru

sharmon

ASKER

Guru,

Not a check in there :( - I was wishing that somehow one might have gotten there, although I knew there wasn't before I even opened it!!!

Shannon Harmon

This is working on becoming the longest thread I have seen.....

dew_associates

Check both CLSID's in the registry, what are the sortorderindex values?

sharmon

ASKER

Dew,

Both are 10

Shannon Harmon

dew_associates

When you click on the My Docs folder, do you see allot of disk activity?

sharmon

ASKER

Dew,

Hardly none at all....

Shannon Harmon

dew_associates

Shannon, whether the time devoted to this next part is worth it or not is up to you, but it may halp you understand where the problem is. Open regedit and scan the registry for all "my documents" entries, especially anything that goes to histry, such as last used, or to installation, copying or saving documents and look for potential problems involving directories or programs that no longer exist.

Asta Cu

Hi Dennis, thank you for stopping by and helping.

:0)

Asta

jjcontact

Windows Annoyances suggests if Special folders are acting weird, to try Tweakui repair tab.

sharmon

ASKER

Well, I have tried did the looooooong process of scanning the registry for any invalid entries. Although I did find a couple of entries that I removed, it didn't change anything for me. I tried TweakUI98 a while back and it didn't do anything for me. I don't know, I give up.

Shannon Harmon

dew_associates

Shannon, if you remove the "My Documents" from the desktop and then just create a regular shortcut, how does the system react?

sharmon

ASKER

If I do that, the new folder is very fast. If I then take that same folder and then point it as the My Documents folder, it slows to a crawl again...

Shannon Harmon

jjcontact

What about going to

http://www.sysinternals.com, get Dllview and see what extra dlls pop up when My Documents are running vs just a regular explorer window?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

dew_associates

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See answer

jjcontact

In case it doesn't recreate.

http://www.windows-help.net/windows98/troub-02.shtml

jjcontact

I wonder if you are having this problem, without the error messages.

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q189/9/52.asp

sharmon

ASKER

Hello,

Well, it's fixed. jjcontact, while your tools from sysinternals are very nice, there was no difference in dll's ran in the My Doc's folder vs any other folder. One of the dll's must handle that folder differently but still loads in all explorer windows I would assume. Dew, I did try the scranreg/fix as well and nothing different. BUT, I just finished doing the Office 2k SR1 Update and whalla, when the system rebooted, it was magically fixed. All I can assume was that it is either a known undocumented bug, or I really had a corrupted dll somewhere that runs in process with explorer.exe!

Anyhow, you have all been so great, it's hard to give out the points. But Dew tried to help the most, and that's who I decided to give em' to...jjcontact also deserve's points, so I am going to post another question for him to get points as well. I would like to thank everyone for trying to help.

PS...if anyone ever really finds out what caused this problem, it would be great if you could let me know. I really want to know the answer to why it doesn't work, I'd leave the thread open but my god, I hate scrolling down this far:)

Take care everyone,
Shannon Harmon

dew_associates

Thanks Shannon. I'll bookmark this page as I have a meeting with other MS developers next Thursday. This has happened before, but usually only on Dell and Gateway machines.