# My system is slow to show shorcuts.



## Cloudchaser (Jan 7, 2011)

I use shortcuts placed in some of my sub folders to navigate quickly between folders.

For the past several days, when I go to open or save a file and the open/save file window opens to a folder with shortcuts, it is slow to show those shortcuts and until the open or save window shows all the things it's supposed to show, it won't respond to commands.

When I navigate in Windows Explorer to a folder that contains shortcuts, it is slow to read those shortcuts and show the icons.

I've even noticed that the Start/All Programs menu is slow to respond and show the program shortcuts installed there as well.

Put simply, my system seems to be slow to read and show shortcuts and their icons.

I have no idea what could be causing this. I have not installed any programs for several weeks or made any other changes to my computer. What can I do to find and fix the problem? Everything else works just fine with no problems whatsoever.


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## Jashwa (Jan 7, 2011)

It's just the pages with shortcuts, not everything in general?


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## Lobar (Jan 7, 2011)

First thought that comes to mind is that your disk may be highly fragmented.  From My Computer, right-click your drive and click Properties.  Under the Tools tab, click Defragment Now.  Do an analysis, report back the percent fragmented, and then defragment if it recommends you to do so.  Defragging may take several hours.


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## Cloudchaser (Jan 7, 2011)

Jashwa said:


> It's just the pages with shortcuts, not everything in general?


 
Yep.  It seems to be slow in showing the shortcuts




Lobar said:


> First thought that comes to mind is that your disk may be highly fragmented.  From My Computer, right-click your drive and click Properties.  Under the Tools tab, click Defragment Now.  Do an analysis, report back the percent fragmented, and then defragment if it recommends you to do so.  Defragging may take several hours.


 
Thanx, but that's been ruled out.  Defrag is set to run once a week and all drives show as 0% fragmented


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## Love! (Jan 7, 2011)

weekly defragmentation? that's crazy
your hard drive's probably wearing out after all that


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## Hir (Jan 7, 2011)

^yeah, that

it could be registry errors too, CCleaner has a pretty neat registry cleaner. you could also try a disk check because it could be HDD errors and disk checking can catch a bunch of 'em.


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## Love! (Jan 7, 2011)

DarkNoctus said:


> ^yeah, that
> 
> it could be registry errors too


not likely
the entire registry is loaded into memory at startup
so fixing errors and such offers negligible performance gains at best
and the errors themselves don't impact performance nearly as much as people might think
it's snake oil
just like monster cables



> you could also try a disk check because it could be HDD errors and disk checking can catch a bunch of 'em.


but that won't fix them if there are errors
at best it'll buy him some time before his drive fails


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## Hir (Jan 7, 2011)

in my experience disk checks are very efficient and are worth a shot at least, and it doesn't always mean a drive is about to fail.

i was just offering things he should look at.


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## Lobar (Jan 7, 2011)

Cloudchaser said:


> Thanx, but that's been ruled out.  Defrag is set to run once a week and all drives show as 0% fragmented


 
Well, I still suspect the problem starts and ends at the drive itself, so if not fragmentation, you may want to start backing up data in case of imminent failure. :/


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## Hir (Jan 7, 2011)

driver updates might help as well, just a thought.


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## Love! (Jan 7, 2011)

Lobar said:


> Well, I still suspect the problem starts and ends  at the drive itself, so if not fragmentation, you may want to start  backing up data in case of imminent failure. :/


 "the question's not if a hard drive will fail, but when"



DarkNoctus said:


> in my experience disk checks are very  efficient and are worth a shot at least, and it doesn't always mean a  drive is about to fail.
> 
> i was just offering things he should look at.


  i'm not saying he _shouldn't_ check his drive
  he should just keep in mind that it won't permanently fix anything if there are problems with it



DarkNoctus said:


> driver updates might help as well, just a thought.


 i'm starting to think you don't know anything about computers beyond what you've gleaned from pop-up ads :v


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## Hir (Jan 7, 2011)

i actually know a lot about computers and i'm suggesting some of the things people don't generally think about sometimes, i know that a lot of things that i'm suggesting are unrelated to hard drive issues but it's worth going through those and seeing what happens

if he goes through those and still has errors at the end of it then yeah the chances are his drive is getting old and he should replace it.

EDIT: OP never mentioned how old his drive was. though drives are known to fail even when they're new, the age of it can be a big indication. a drive older than a year showing issues like this generally mean they're getting too old to use to the point where your system will just slow down and eventually just fail. it's why i host all my files from an external, to put less strain on my OS drive and potentially extend the life of it.


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## Runefox (Jan 7, 2011)

Where do these shortcuts point? The same computer or a network path? If a network path, make sure the connection on both ends is reliable and that the other computer is running OK.

The more likely scenario is the same computer, and it sounds to me like weekly defrags may have introduced filesystem errors (as one of many factors that can cause this). While the 2k/XP and later defrag system is designed to minimize this, things like power interruptions and unexpected shutdowns can leave some data corruption. To rule this out, run a chkdsk - Start->Run->*chkdsk /F /R /B C:*->OK->Yes. Let this run, and it will attempt to find and repair any filesystem damage while also checking for and marking bad sectors (physical damage/defects) on the disk. If any bad sectors are present, I recommend replacing the drive ASAP, as it can no longer be relied upon. Bad sectors can also cause this kind of slowdown, so do be sure to use that command exactly (assuming C: is the drive in question) and let it run to completion.

As for chipset drivers, it wouldn't be the first time, but it is a somewhat rare occasion where drivers self-destruct at random. The usual cause is a Windows Update gone wrong, and can be quite a hassle. That said, if the chipset drivers were toast and the drive were running in PIO mode, the whole system would be suffering from intense slowdown.

EDIT: I typed all that out on my iPhone and only had one typo, a capitalized O. Nice.


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## Lobar (Jan 7, 2011)

Runefox said:


> EDIT: I typed all that out on my iPhone and only had one typo, a capitalized O. Nice.


 


Runefox said:


> As for chipset drivers, it wouldn't be the *dirst* time, but



:V


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## Runefox (Jan 7, 2011)

Lobar said:


> :V


 
DAMN. D:


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## Cloudchaser (Jan 8, 2011)

Lobar said:


> Well, I still suspect the problem starts and ends at the drive itself, so if not fragmentation, you may want to start backing up data in case of imminent failure. :/


 
Oh yeah, I have everything important backed up on an external drive.  I do it using a program called Syncback




DarkNoctus said:


> EDIT: OP never mentioned how old his drive was. though drives are known to fail even when they're new, the age of it can be a big indication. a drive older than a year showing issues like this generally mean they're getting too old to use to the point where your system will just slow down and eventually just fail. it's why i host all my files from an external, to put less strain on my OS drive and potentially extend the life of it.



It's 3 months old.  I just got a new Win7 system in October.




Runefox said:


> Where do these shortcuts point? The same computer or a network path?



The same computer.



Runefox said:


> The more likely scenario is the same computer, and it sounds to me like weekly defrags may have introduced filesystem errors (as one of many factors that can cause this).



So it might be a good idea to schedule the defrag to run once a month instead of once a week?  Went ahead and changed it to that.



Runefox said:


> While the 2k/XP and later defrag system is designed to minimize this, things like power interruptions and unexpected shutdowns can leave some data corruption.



It's actually a laptop and its power cord is plugged in to an APC, so power interruptions are virtually impossible, but now that you mention it, a few weeks ago, I remember going away for a few minutes, coming back and finding it at the login screen as if I'd told it to restart when I hadn't and after I put my password in and it fully booted, I got a message saying something about an unexpected shutdown



Runefox said:


> To rule this out, run a chkdsk - Start->Run->*chkdsk /F /R /B C:*->OK->Yes. Let this run, and it will attempt to find and repair any filesystem damage while also checking for and marking bad sectors (physical damage/defects) on the disk. If any bad sectors are present, I recommend replacing the drive ASAP, as it can no longer be relied upon. Bad sectors can also cause this kind of slowdown, so do be sure to use that command exactly (assuming C: is the drive in question) and let it run to completion.



That didn't seem to indicate anything, but I probably should schedule it to run at next startup since that hasn't been done since I got this system 3 months ago.



Runefox said:


> As for chipset drivers, it wouldn't be the first time, but it is a somewhat rare occasion where drivers self-destruct at random. The usual cause is a Windows Update gone wrong, and can be quite a hassle. That said, if the chipset drivers were toast and the drive were running in PIO mode, the whole system would be suffering from intense slowdown.



Everything else runs just fine, so I think the chipset drivers are OK




Thinking that maybe there was something wrong with the shortcuts themselves, I decided to try deleting and recreating them.

I tried using "search (folder name)" to quickly find and delete all of them at once as that had always worked before.  Search would not see them, which is unusual.

So I went into each folder that has them and deleted them one folder at a time.  I noticed that it was slow to delete them which is also unusual.

With the shortcuts gone, all slow to show problems went away.  Windows Explorer and open/save windows showed everything instantly just like they should.

So I tried recreating the shortcuts to see what would happen.  Again, Windows Explorer and open/save windows was slow to show them.

Long story short, my system has apparently decided that it doesn't like shortcuts and is slow to show them in both Windows Explorer and open/save windows.  What confuses me is why.  Why did it start doing that and why can't I find a solution to the problem?

I'm now thinking that I may just stop using them altogether.  I started using them when I had WinXP, but navigating from place to place without shortcuts is easier in Win7 than it was in WinXP, easier enough that it's probably not worth the trouble to find and fix why it's slow to read shortcuts just to make it a bit faster to get around


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## Jashwa (Jan 8, 2011)

A non constructive side note: I love the irony in shortcuts making you take longer to get to places.


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## Cloudchaser (Jan 8, 2011)

Jashwa said:


> A non constructive side note: I love the irony in shortcuts making you take longer to get to places.


 
Heh, yep, that is ironic.  Now it's actually faster to navigate around without 'em


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## Runefox (Jan 8, 2011)

The chkdsk command won't do anything inside Windows - It HAS to be run on next startup. Reboot the machine and let it do its thing.


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## Hir (Jan 8, 2011)

Cloudchaser said:


> It's 3 months old.  I just got a new Win7 system in October.


 
2 hard drives only lasted 3 months or so in a row, afterwards I found out my power unit was dying and killing my HDD's. hopefully the same isn't happening to you.


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## Cloudchaser (Jan 9, 2011)

DarkNoctus said:


> 2 hard drives only lasted 3 months or so in a row, afterwards I found out my power unit was dying and killing my HDD's. hopefully the same isn't happening to you.



I hope so too.  It's still under warranty, but replacing it would still be a pain


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