Hourglass cursor appears whenever doing anything inside windows explorer.

Question

Hourglass cursor appears whenever doing anything inside windows explorer.

Anonymous

I'm having a hard time finding the source of the problem, and a hard time fixing it.

When I'm using windows explorer, any time I click anything, the cursor flashes to an hourglass twice, sometimes three times, and then follows my request. It slows down any activities in the explorer to a crawl. To be clear, it isn't the mini hourglass beside the cursor, it's the full hourglass.

This happens when I click on a folder to highlight it, when I click on a file to highlight or rename, when I double click on a folder to open it, when I right click, or any other interaction in windows explorer.

Other than this problem, my computer seems to be running just fine. Operating a web browser, running other software, etc is perfectly smooth. The save/open window browser inside applications functions just fine, and doesn't suffer from this problem.

Also worth noting is that within windows explorer, clicking on quick access or this pc left menubar items does not cause the hourglass to appear. It only happens when clicking on items inside the main part of the explorer.

Previews of jpegs load quickly when a folder is opened. That doesn't appear to be slowed at all.

Task manager doesn't reveal anything taking up processing or ram. I've got 64gb as it is. I've tried rebuilding the index. I've tried unplugging peripherals.

This happens for all of my drives (2 nvme + 1 ssd). Drive health appears to be good, as do temperatures.

Windows doesn't have any updates to install.

The problem persists when I boot to safemode.

Has anyone else had this problem? How did you solve it?

Computer specs:

B5550I Aorus Pro AX

AMD 3900X

64 GB Ram

RTX 3090

Windows 10 Home

10.0.19045 Build 19045

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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4 answers

Answer 1

After much poking - prodding and grief - I found the answer in a Redditt forum.

It is Adobe and the CCloud.

They have created a bug in January 2024 and have still not fixed it as of March 10/24.

Follow this link to the Adobe forums concerning Adobe's ending of cloud syncing and damage of windows explorer.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/creative-cloud-desktop-discussions/major-issue-adobe-s-ending-of-of-cloud-syncing-seems-to-have-damaged-windows-explorer-for-many/td-p/14406585/page/2

From the Adobe Community discussion

Solution: Rename the file C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe OS Extension\AdobeExplorerExtensionCore.dll to some other name.

After this, my Windows Explorer was fast again. It was instantaneous. No logout/login was needed.

Answer 2

I have solved my problem,

Press Windows Key + R and type SYSDM.CPL in Run. Click OK or press Enter key.

In System Properties window, switch to Advanced tab, click Settings under Performance.
Next, in Performance Options, I turned off a few of the visual effects.

I turned off a few at the same time, so I'm not sure exactly which one was the problem but:

show translucent selection rectangle is off

show shadows under windows is off

show shadows under mouse pointer is off

save taskbar thumbnail previews is off

fade out menu items after clicking is off

animate windows when minimizing and maximizing is off

animate controls and elements inside windows is off

use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop is also off

This process may have had something to do with it, but no changes were made while following the steps.

Try resetting File Explorer (explorer.exe) process:

Press Windows Key + R and type SYSDM.CPL in Run. Click OK or press Enter key.
In System Properties window, switch to Advanced tab, click Settings under Performance.
Next, in Performance Options, under Processor scheduling, make sure that Adjust for best performance of: is set to Programs.
Then in the same window, under Virtual memory, click Settings button.
On Virtual Memory page, make sure Automatically manage paging file sizes for all drives option is checked. Click OK, then Apply, OK on rest of windows.
Reboot the machine and see if issue is resolved now.

Answer 3

I am having the exact same symptoms and problems!

I think it started around the same time as it happened to you.

Sometime in early February. Didn't take much notice of it to begin with.

But it has not cleared up so been trying to figure it out.

At least I know now that it is not just me☺

I tried all the settings that you modified, but no success at all.

I even tried turning off 'Show contents when dragging'

But no improvement.

Because this is happening to more than 1 PC in different parts of the planet I am suspecting there was an update around the 1st week of Feb that has a MS bug in it?

This bug is really annoying and slows down my workflow as I do a fair bit in explorer.

If anyone else has ideas please post them here.

Thanks

Bruce B

Answer 4

Following up on this, it seems that when I click an item in windows explorer, the hourglass appears while the computer is trying to decide what to show in the ribbon, or the top part of the window. For example, if I click an .mov, it hangs while determining to show the pink 'play' tab at the top of the window. When I click a jpeg, it takes a minute to show 'manage' in yellow at the top of the window. Switching from jpeg to another jpeg still causes the interruption of the hourglass.

Clicking on the address bar to go 'up' in the directory also causes the problem, while clicking anything on the left side menu, such as 'quick access' doesn't cause a problem at all.

"Windows did not find any integrity violations" - when running sfc /scannow.

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Hourglass cursor appears whenever doing anything inside windows explorer.

4 answers