Minutes to access items on mapped drives

Question

I'm not sure why, but I was asked to repost my question on this forum, but given that engineers know more than anyone else, I'll post it here.

I know this issue has been raised on many websites, many times. However, I still have not found a solution. I have tried every registry change and service verification, going so far as to doing a clean install of Windows.

I have two very fast Synology NAS devices on my network (Cisco managed gigabit backbone) and truncated NICs in the NAS devices. There is very little network traffic as I am the only one accessing these devices at any time. I have a newer box with Windows Server 2012 running my domain.

The problem I see is that anytime I open Explorer and select one of the mapped drives (or their folders in recent section), it takes minutes for the items to populate. This happens every time. I can wait and finally see the items, then close Explorer and open another one, and the huge time delay happens again. After the delay, when I can finally click on a file, it takes another minute or two after I click it until Explorer un-freezes. Then if I open a Word doc, for example, it takes another 2-3 minutes until Word finally opens the document.

Does anyone know what causes this?

Answer 1

Hello there,

If you are experiencing slow response times when opening files or applications, there are several potential causes. Here are some troubleshooting steps you can try to improve the performance:

Check disk usage: Open the Task Manager by pressing "Ctrl + Shift + Esc" and go to the "Performance" tab. Check the disk usage percentage. If it consistently stays at or near 100%, it could indicate that your disk is overloaded. In such cases, consider upgrading to a faster disk drive or SSD if possible.

Scan for malware: Perform a full system scan using a reliable antivirus or antimalware software to check for any malware infections that could be slowing down your system.

Free up disk space: Ensure that you have sufficient free space on your system drive (usually the C: drive). If it is running low on space, try freeing up disk space by deleting unnecessary files or transferring them to an external storage device.

Update device drivers: Outdated or incompatible device drivers can cause performance issues. Update your drivers, especially those related to the disk drive and graphics card, to their latest versions. You can visit the manufacturer's website for each device to download and install the updated drivers.

Disable unnecessary startup programs: Open the Task Manager and navigate to the "Startup" tab. Disable any unnecessary programs from starting up with your computer. Right-click on the program and select "Disable" to prevent it from launching at startup.

Perform a disk cleanup: Use the built-in Disk Cleanup tool in Windows to remove temporary files, system files, and other unnecessary data. To access it, search for "Disk Cleanup" in the Start menu and run the tool.

I used AI provided by ChatGPT to formulate part of this response. I have verified that the information is accurate before sharing it with you.

Hope this resolves your Query !!

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