   Windows slowdown........
  Lately I seem to be experiencing a problem when navigating through folders on Windows 98.After using my PC for a while opening folders starts slowing down. Eventually it can take a few seconds to open a folder. I''ve using an AMD 2000+ XP with 512MB RAM so I can''t see why I''m experiencing this problem. Also, if I open any application, for example Notepad and go to the ->File->Open dialog, I can navigate through the file system no problem. Why the hell is it slowing down when I''m using Windows to navigate. This is EXTREMELY annoying. ARGGHH!!!! 
  It''s just Windows. Explorer has many bugs which sometimes show up, sometimes they don''t. ;] darkoneRegistered Linux User #317188 ;  Try to keep it down to 3 folders at once, and yes...it is because of Explorer and Windows. You can never trust Microsoft.   There''s no town drunk here, we all take turns.Velocity Gaming Force;quote:Original post by Ekim_Gram  Try to keep it down to 3 folders at once, and yes...it is because of Explorer and Windows. You can never trust Microsoft.   quote:Original post by darkoneqwe  It''s just Windows. Explorer has many bugs which sometimes show up, sometimes they don''t. ;] When all else fails, pull an answer out of thin air and present it as fact.Ask yourself: Did everything work correctly before? Yes. Using real problem solving rather than "It must be M$''s fault, and look at me I''m kool" I would cite two possible problems. The first is that you''ve installed a program that added a shell extension lately and it is buggy. Another but potentally serious problem is that you have a problem with the harddrive itself (harddrives are now on 1 year warrenties, and it shows). It may be that your harddrive is heating up too much (dust build up could cause this) or it is actually starting to fail. If your system is quiet enough try and listen to your harddrive when you open a folder. A scatching/skipping sound would indicate that it is having trouble seeking (it tries, it fails, it tries again until it gets it). Assuming your motherboard and harddrive aren''t ancient get something that can read SMART values (Trial version of Active SMART). SMART is a system that allows a harddrive to report information about it''s operation. SMART enabled motherboards will usually only use this information when it indicates an imminent failure (it will tell you something like "Harddrive failure imminent. Backup data now" when you boot up). Assuming you use Active SMART there are two things to check for: Harddrive stats and temperature.As you can see my Seagate drive not only runs hot (most Seagates do), but that (most likely the heat) it is dieing (I started running Active SMART regularly because I could hear the clicking). It normally takes a few days worth of data to get an estimate of when things will fail (T.E.C Date), and as you can see the Seagate will likely begin to fail in a month and half.A healthy drive will show a good gap between the current value and threshold (potential failure) value.;  That''s a very depressing utility ;  You should look at any recently installed drivers too, or anything that minimizes to the taskbar (by the system clock)  if you''ve installed anything that like this recently, you should try removing such programs and seeing if the system responds more properly.BTW, sometimes removing a program that causes problems like this will not fix the problem.  e.g. I have an Nvidia driver for my Graphics card that causes my Win2k system to pause for roughly 45 seconds on bootup and shutdown if I have SP3 installed on the machine at the same time.  Installation causes the problem, but removal of the driver does not fix it.  If I use a different driver version everything is fine.  I had to reinstall Win2k a couple of times to figure out exactly what the incompatibility was (Nvidia driver & SP3);  I have the exact same problem as described by Briskon but it only happens to me after I run Winzip. ;  You may also want to try Ad Aware, to find (and remove) any programs that got installed along side something else, without your really knowing about it.-Odd the Hermit ;  Why are you using win98? How long have you had it installed on that computer? I dont know if its true or not, but ive heard of something called OS rot, where the operating system just slowly breaks down and becomes slower and less stable the longer you have it. Just stuff like junk files piling up, tons of old installed programs that were never cleaned up, and god knows what else. Maybe you need to format your computer? How long has it been since you reboted it, or better yet turned it completely off for a minute or two? Actually, im pretty sure the couple of times ive heard of OS rot, it was also being mentioned with respect to windows 98.Come to think of it, my room mate has problems like that too. another wierd thing she gets is that, when winamp is playing an mp3 file, and you scroll down the page in internet explorer or windows explorer, the music skips. She has an Athalon 1700. I think it might be an amd ''feature''. ;  *sigh*It''s the age old problem - memory leak.  It may or may not be Explorer (I take Win2ks TaskMan for granted these days - it''s a bit harder on Win9x)  Whilst half a gig of RAM is a fair chunk, it''s still a finite amount, and any process not giving back what it don''t need anymore will eventually take all you''re memory up.  After that Windows starts paging huge amounts in and out of virtual memory (i.e. off your hard drive - worst of all, from a file stored on a FAT32 partition.  That;s about as slow as you can get)I can only advise that given your next opportunity you consider upgrading to either an NT or XP (*shudders*) version of Windows.  If you aren''t patched up you can always try Windows Update - that might fix your problem if it is an Explorer issue and not some 3rd party prog you run.