Have you experienced recently that your Windows becomes slow frequently, especially when you try to open or save a file in an application, or open a directory in the file explorer? If you notice your system is often struggling, and most of the time these are the occasions when it happens, then very likely you have indexing or registry issues. Don’t worry, this problem can be solved.
THE SOLUTION
First of all, it is useful to go through all the steps that are recommended in case of every Windows slowdown, to rule out it is not a malware or something else that is causing the issue.
1. Run a full virus scan of your system. A very good and free tool for this is Trend Micro Housecall. It installs fast, and checks your system effectively. And you don’t need to subscribe for a trial version or anything. You can find it here: https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/forHome/products/housecall.html
2. Make sure you have enough free space on your system drive. Nowdays it is recommended to have at least 100GB of free space (Windows 7 and up), to make sure scheduled backups, virtual memory processes, etc. are not eating up your space causing your system become slow.
When you went through these steps, and still experience slowdown, then it’s time to address the indexing and registry issues of your system, that are very likely the source of the problems. Go on to these steps to fix them:
3. Download the free application called: Advanced Uninstaller Pro from the official website: https://www.advanceduninstaller.com/ The free version will be enough.
Install and start the software.
Go to ‘FILE & REGISTRY TOOLS’
Choose: ‘REGISTRY OPTIMIZER’
Click ‘NEXT’
Wait for the registry check to complete. While the registry optimization is going, the computer may look frozen, but be patient and wait until it finishes. Once it completes, click the “FINISH” button to restart the computer and activate the new optimized registry.
4. In the search bar type ‘INDEXING OPTIONS’ (in Windows 7 you need to press the Start button for the search bar to appear). After it shows up in the search, click it. When the Indexing Options panel opens, you will see some buttons around the bottom, click the one labelled: ‘ADVANCED’
On the Advanced panel, click ‘REBUILD’
It will take an hour or so for the re-indexing to go through. Until then you can close the panel and do other things on your computer.
After going through these steps, very likely the problem will be gone. I had the same problem with my Windows system, and since doing all 4 steps mentioned, my system has been running fast again.
If your problem still persists following these steps, there are some other things you can try that may improve your situation. Check this Youtube video to learn about other ways to address the file explorer issue:
Hopefully one of the steps in the video will be a solution for your problem, too.
WHEN THESE METHODS DO NOT WORK
The solutions mentioned in this article only work in case of the symptoms outlined in the beginning of this article, that is: file explorer loading folders slowly while browsing, opening or saving files. There can be additional symptoms, like applications, especially internet browsers, slowing down frequently, but the file explorer problem is the most outstanding. If your problem is different than this, for example another very usual problem: the system is generally slow all the time, it loads slowly, applications load and work slowly, so the slowdowns are not occasional but constant, then you have other problems. Usually in those cases, your system needs more memory to be installed, but other procedures may be necessary to improve the speed of your system. For solutions in these cases, try searching Youtube, it is always a good source. And as a final solution, you can archive your data from the computer and reinstall your Windows system. That is a long process though, so it should be left as a last resort, but most of the time it is an ultimate working solution. If that does not solve your problem either, very likely you have a hardware problem, and your computer hardware may need to be repaired.
