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Now Then
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File Explorer takes a long time to populate one particular folder

When I open File Explorer in Windows 10 and explore my way to my own personal folder stored on our NAS drive, it takes about 7 seconds to populate the folder with its contents. It loads them in some kind of random order and then once it has finished it then places them in alphanumeric order.
When I use the File > Open command in Word, it takes no time to populate my personal folder.
The problem does not occur when doing the same thing on different PCs on the network.
Could anyone suggest what the problem might be that is causing this slowness?....and how to solve it?
Thank you
Windows 10Windows OS* File explorer

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McKnife

8/22/2022 - Mon
Iamthecreator OM

Are you accessing the folder from Quick Access?
Now Then

ASKER
No. It is a mapped network drive. I just explore from there.
McKnife

To illustrate the difference within word: word has a filter predefined to show only files it can open. It will not show anything else and thus it takes much shorter to list. Is that folder full of files (I mean like hundreds of them in the root folder) many of them images or videos?
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William Peck
Now Then

ASKER
There are only 88 files in the folder.
McKnife

Thumbnails displayed, videos or images? Retry with 88 text files or an empty folder.
Now Then

ASKER
Thank you. That was a great suggestion. That sorted it out. So then I had the same slowness in the folder where I had placed those 88 files. But now I was able to watch it populating the folder with all of the files. It was very slow to make its way though five CorelDraw files. I moved them out into a new folder and sure enough it took about 5 seconds to list those 5 files. Do you have any idea why that would be? Each one is between 16 and 32MB in size.
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McKnife

Thumbnails creation takes time. The NAS is connected va LAN or WLAN? WLAN could have a high latency, even on some LAN connections, it takes time.
Now Then

ASKER
It is LAN. Why would the CorelDraw thumbnail be so slow?
McKnife

The computer reads the file from the NAS and creates a thumbnail from it. I have no idea how your machine behaves with other graphics (take little .jpg pictures, please).
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William Peck
Now Then

ASKER
Are you saying you want a screenshot of something? If so, what?
McKnife

No, I am say that I don't know what is wrong. It could be, that the files are just too big to be process in a short time. "Processed" as in: create thumbnails from. So my suggestion was to retry the same with small pictures, like jpegs of a size of 100KB each.
Now Then

ASKER
I use File Explorer in the details view. Does it still need to analyse the file and create a thumbnail for that?
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McKnife

No, details view would not use thumbnails. I would use a different file explorer, for a test. Take a trial of total commander from www.ghisler.com and see how it deals with the same folders. Maybe that will teach us something about the problem.
Now Then

ASKER
Total Commander is incredibly quick - instantaneous.
Also, File Explorer has no problems on other PCs on the network.
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McKnife

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Now Then

ASKER
It works properly in another user's profile.
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rwheeler23
McKnife

Exactly.
Now Then

ASKER
Sorry, I have been away. I haven't yet arrived at a solution but I think I better just close this thread. Thank you for your help.
McKnife

It would be interesting to see what turned out to be the solution. I think, if you follow 1-4, you'll find it. Please share it some day.
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