Slowness navigating through large mp3 collection

[TripleJ]

General specs: Duron 800 @133x6.5=867MHz, 2x128MB SDR SDRAM, Quantum fireball AS 7,200rpm ATA100 20GB, Win 98SE.

While navigating (windows explorer) through about 5.5GB of mp3's my computer slows down quite a bit after several folder openings. Is this normal? To go forward or back a folder step it takes a couple of seconds.

I have defragmented my drive but there was no difference.

What could I do to speed things up? Would more RAM make a difference?

(note: these mp3's are all from my own CD collection so it's all legit)

Thanks

 

[Mitzi]

<< Is this normal? >>



I don't think so, I have 20Gb+ of MP3 files, browsing through the directory tree is very fast. I fail to see how more RAM would solve the problem. I use Windows 2000 - perhaps that got something to do with it?

 

[stevewm]

Are these mp3's in the My Documents folder by any chance? If they are move them out of it, stop using the My Documents folder, and your problem will go away!

Win98/Me have a bug with system class folders.

Everytime you open/close a system folder (like My Documents) a new registry steam gets created (streams hold folder view info). There is a max limit on streams of 256, when you get close to this limit opening/closing/browsing in that folder will become slow and a reboot fixes it.

A search on Google groups shows this: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=win98+my+documents+slow&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wg

 

[Mavrick007]

that happened to me as well when I had alot of media files in My Documents of Win98 SE. It was very slow to read the directories but when I limited the files, it made searching faster. Now I have directories on other disks with 1000's more files than My Documents but they have no browsing problems at all.

Limit the My Documents folder and don't use it so much if your mp3's are in there.

 

[Mitzi]

<< Are these mp3's in the My Documents folder by any chance? If they are move them out of it, stop using the My Documents folder, and your problem will go away!

Win98/Me have a bug with system class folders.

Everytime you open/close a system folder (like My Documents) a new registry steam gets created (streams hold folder view info). There is a max limit on streams of 256, when you get close to this limit opening/closing/browsing in that folder will become slow and a reboot fixes it.

A search on Google groups shows this: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=win98+my+documents+slow&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wg >>



Jeez, I didn't know that! Learn something new everyday, thanks!