Topic by Omar Alvarado 2016-05-23 04:46:12

  • Registered: 2010-07-27
  • Posts: 1,261
  • User Karma: 81

Heya all,
I have a lenovo t420 with windows 7 64 bit professional on it. Its worked great for several years with almost no hardware issues.
I have the OS on a 120 gb Crucial SSD, Intel I5 2.5 ghz, 8 gb ram, secondary storage bay for storing files.
The issue is windows explorer becomes laggy throughout a session of windows, until I restart.
It used to be I could have a session open for days, now its just an hour and usually considerably less.
I've checked for malware using malwarebytes, currently defragging all my hard drives and not my ssd, as its a bad idea to do that to an ssd, cleaned up my startup entries, this windows install is no more than about 3 months old, disabled and re enabled the windows indexer, currently running defragler in the background, cleaned up the registry with cCleaner, cleaned up temp files and cache, still no improvement.
I did notice this start happening right around when I accidentally enabled offline files for my nas, of which I got a few weeks ago.
I've ensured offline files for that drive were turned off now, but I have this sinking feeling its still trying to establish a partnership between the drive and this computer.
any ideas? I have almost no more ideas of what I could do, aside from just reinstalling the OS but, ehh, I really don't want to go through with it unless I have no other option.
Please do not recommend third party file system explorer apps, as windows explorer has worked for me for as long as I've used windows based computers.
Thanks!

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Reply by crashmaster 2016-05-23 22:43:05

  • Registered: 2010-08-25
  • Posts: 2,012
  • User Karma: 126

Hmmm yeah people have said do not defrag your ssd but have you checked your status of your ssd?
Technically you shouldn't need to defrag it as such being that its flash but that doesn't mean it won't need it.
Have you run the system without an nas connected?
My only advice is to try to reformat or maybe check if you have driver updates first.
While generally using the system I don't have any of my backup drives connected or in fact running.
I do when I want to transfer something to the drives or if I want to access something on one of the drives.
But for most of the day the 2 usb drives I put in and out for backups and general usage remain disconnected.
In fact I don't run anything including cloud services unless ofcause I want them to run while not in use.
Its why I am still on 7.

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Reply by Omar Alvarado 2016-05-24 03:51:49

  • Registered: 2010-07-27
  • Posts: 1,261
  • User Karma: 81

If you defrag an ssd, kiss it good bye. From what I know, when you defrag an ssd, it puts a lot of stress on the flash memory and in turn, shortens it's lifespan dramatically. This hardware is kinda old with at least 6 years of runtime, and I'm not the original owner of this machine I bought it secondhand.
I did notice this start happening when I started using my nas. Only problem is, now its constant whether or not the nas is connected I'm thinking it's still trying to establish a partnership between the computer and the nas.
I could try drivers, but this machine has not had any driver updates since like 2014 or so. I think the hardware is just had it, which sucks, but that's for another day.
Anyway, thanks for the help!

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Reply by Ian Reed 2016-05-24 21:18:32

  • Registered: 2012-01-29
  • Posts: 636
  • User Karma: 170

I have a similar problem with Windows explorer, but I use a third party file explorer most of the time.
When I do switch back to Windows Explorer for certain things and find it slow, I restart explorer.exe and it goes back to being fast again.
While this doesn't solve your problem it is a lot easier to do than restarting your computer, so might make the issue a bit less painful.

Here are the specific steps I follow:
I open task manager by pressing control shift escape.
Then I type the first part of explorer.exe to highlight it.
Then I press delete and then enter to kill the process.
Then I choose new task from the file menu in task manager and type explorer and press enter to restart it.

Hope this helps.

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.

Ian Reed's Website

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Reply by Omar Alvarado 2016-06-03 10:18:40

  • Registered: 2010-07-27
  • Posts: 1,261
  • User Karma: 81

Thanks Ian.
As you might have it, the nas, coupled with old hardware, was adding up, to cause my lag. Every time I restarted explorer, it would work fine, then gradually start lagging.
As of now I've jumped the gun and picked up my windows 8.1 machine again, and am sort of regretting not buying another windows 7 machine when I had the chance.
Oh well. Guess I have to keep updated anyhow.

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