Hey folks! We're running into a frustrating problem in our office where we store tons of marketing images as .TIFF files on a network drive. Whenever users try to browse through these folders, File Explorer tends to freeze, especially since there are thousands of these images, each around 4 to 10 MB. We notice that while this happens, our Task Manager shows network usage spiking to about 70 Mbit/s. It eventually unfreezes, but scrolling through the folder causes it to freeze again. We've never had this issue on Windows 10, and we're currently on Windows 11 (24H2). We've tried a bunch of things, like reinstalling PCs, switching LAN ports, and even disabling thumbnail previews in Explorer, but to no avail. Has anyone else faced this? We're really out of ideas here and would appreciate any input you might have!
3 Answers
Have you checked if there's any kind of preview or thumbnail feature active? Sometimes, Explorer tries to fetch previews for the images which can slow things down. Try turning off any preview pane or setting that might be loading the images, since that could be a culprit for the lag. It would be worth a shot!
You might want to try using WinThumbsPreloader. It’s not a perfect fix, but it could give you some insight into what’s going wrong by preloading thumbnails, which could help speed things up a bit. It’s worth experimenting with it to see if it helps.
It sounds like the massive number of large files might be causing Explorer to choke when trying to load all the thumbnails or details. A good approach might be to sort these files into different directories based on date or another organizing principle. This could help alleviate that load because Explorer doesn’t have to process all the files at once. Even though you’re using Article Numbers for sorting, breaking them down into smaller folders could really make a difference.
**Oh, and remember that disabling thumbnails doesn’t completely stop Explorer from trying to load file details, it might still be working hard in the background!**
That’s a good point. But the problem is we need them sorted by article numbers for our workflow. With about 2500 images in one folder, it’s tough to figure out if further sorting would help!
I did change that setting, but unfortunately, it didn't have any effect. It's still taking ages to load the files.