Windows Vista slow file handling with large numbers of files.

Ok this has got to be one of the more annoying problems for me . Even more than
the random folder view every time you enter a folder.

I have a foler that collects a large number of small files for a program that
I use.. Typically they are under 50k in size but often there can be close to
200,000 in a single folder.

If I want to delete one it can take several minutes to delete it...

It will sit at "preparing to delete" for what seems like forever.

The more files in a folder the longer it takes...

Now my computer is arguably top of the line it has an intel s3200 MB with a
xeon quad core and 4 gigs of ram and terrabyte hard drives.

It should not take 15 minutes to delete 1,000 of the 200,000 files,

Additionally these files are on a second internal physical drive and should
have nothing to do with the rest of the system.

Oh and one other note. Mass deleting files from a command prompt works fine.
so if I want to delete everything in the folder via a command prompt it works
as expected but if I try via windows explorer it takes forever.

Has M$ come out with a patch for this yet? I am on service pack 2 of vista
ultimate and it has all the updates that were presented via the update utility.

Thanks for any help

Have you checked wether indexing is active on the drive? I don't know that
this is the problem but it sounds like maybe you have some
allocation/pointer issues. Just a thought.

Thanks for that.
Turning off indexing makes the deleting files back to the way it should be...
Although it still take 60 seconds or so to refresh the file list

That is something I can bear... Better that 15+ minutes to delete.

Thanks again.

'The copy process may stop responding when you try to copy files from a
server on a network to a Windows Vista-based computer'
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931770)

i dont know if this will work for you, but i thought i would throw it
out there just in case.this may help also:

'vista calculating time remaining fix'
(http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...9-6374eb1afcf0)

Unfortunately I had almost all of that stuff turned off already. I actually
use the fax and the tablet stuff( I have a bamboo tablet)

From some serious hunting on the web I have noticed that this problem occurs
with every Vista box I have come across.

Hopefully Microsft has this fixed in the next version.

[hibernated]

Using 3rd-party software integrated with explorer is another option other than type command in dos-box. I do not know if it will violate forum rules to recommend some softwares here, so ...