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Win98SE Slow Folders

catsbuddy

Member
I set up a Windows system for a buddy. Everything was great until I upgraded to 90SE from 95. He goes into "my computer" and starts opening folders. It doesn't matter what drive he accesses. Within a half dozen folders, folders start taking longer and longer to open. I've seen the problem get so bad that we open a folder, go get a coffee, return, and the folder still hasn't opened. When closing folders, the same thing happens. A reboot and everything runs great... for the first few folders.

The problem started on a 96MB K6-2 500 system. We've upgraded to a Duron 1.3, Biostar KT133A motherboard, 384MB Crucial Cas-2 sdram, 2 7200rpm drives. We have also reinstalled 98SE from scratch. The reinstall worked for about a week, and the same thing started to happen. A virus? He runs Norton Antivirus 2002 regularly and keeps the signatures up to date.

I've moved the swap file to a second 7200 drive, with a a min and max size of 384 to a gig. I've used Cacheman to increase the page buffers, the name cache to 3000 items, the path cache to 96 items, and set the disk cache to a minimum or 4 megs and a maximum of 32 megs. I've also pulled all expansion cards except for the video card to see if somehow one of them might be a problem. I've tried a different video card. I've disconnectd the second hard drive and the CD. I don't think the problem is hardware related.

Everything else seems ok. Applications start up and run fine. Thins like making backup copies with pkzip run fine. The problem seems to be limited to Folders.

I'm hoping this rings a bell with someone out there. Thanks in advance.
 
Is he using the My Documents folder by any chance?

The entire 9x base had a very bad bug with the My Documents folder. Just browsing into the My Documents folder one time would set it off (ANY system class folder would cause the bug, Your IE History folder or Temporary Internet Files folder for examply) It causes browsing around folders to go slower and slower. A reboot fixes it until you go into any of those folders again. The bug shows up in varying degrees depending on your system configuration.

Try not browsing into any of the folders I mentioned, see if it goes away.

This is a valid bug. Goto any search engine and type in "win98 slow folders" and you'll get hundreds, if not thousands of results about it. The only known fix it to stop browsing into those folders.
 
Thanks. I'll run it by him.

BTW, I reinstalled 98SE again last night and was reminded that IE4 gets installed with it. I had updated IE4 to IE5.5, which might have been when the trouble started. So this time we're staying with IE4. Since he runs Netscape and Mozilla we don't really use IE, except it is the default viewer for jpegs.
 
So M$ sells a defective program and the end user has to make 'adjustments' in his use of the product for it to work at a reasonable speed. I hate monopolies.
 
catsbuddy..you must have PM'd me and turned your PM off..turn it on please 🙂

here's my message to you

My PM is not working towards you for some reason..I don't know what's going
on but oh well..there are two other people interested in the processor, but
they haven't really said they wanted to buy it, so if you want it now it's
yours. how did you want to pay?

also, if you have AIM message me under impulse21x
 
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