New PC slow to access files - help!

SteveC86

Honorable
Apr 16, 2012
18
0
10,510
Hello Tom'shardware community.

I have relatively new PC (specs below), and everything with it runs fine, apart from a strange issue where it takes a really, really long time to access any video media I haven't opened for a long time. I thought it might be the HDD, so I defragmented it and ran 'HDtune', and got what seem like normal results (compared to others with similar HDD), will post a pic below. The problem really only seems to affect files that haven't been accessed during my session on the PC - once they've 'loaded' once, they open quickly if closed and reopened. So in a nutshell, I go to my a folder containing video media, try to open a 300mb file of various formats and it takes up to 45 seconds to open, all the while the green progress bar moves slowly across the top of the windows 7 file explorer. Can anyone suggest what the problem might be?

b3o3ty.jpg


Motherboard : Gigabyte H81M-S2PV
CPU : Intel I5 4th Gen 4670 Quad Core 3.4Ghz (turbo 3.8Ghz) CPU
Hard Drive : 1tb Sata Hard Drive
Memory : 8gb DDR3 1600mhz Corsair Vengeance Memory
Graphics Card : Geforce GT 640 2gb (Dual screen support via DVI /HDMI / VGA)
Software : Windows 7 Home 64 bit

Some 'Intel Rapid storage Technology' software came installed on the PC, and runs on start up. I've left it alone assuming it does more harm than good, but I'm still looking at it suspiciously...

Any help is appreciated.
 

SteveC86

Honorable
Apr 16, 2012
18
0
10,510
I just had a read of that Krasten75, and while following the instructions I found my folder was set as 'General Items' already. Thanks for the suggestion though. Browsing the downloads folder and it's subfolders is fine - it's all instant - it's opening the actual files that is a problem. When I try to open a video there, VLC media player opens with black screen, at the same time the green progress bar starts tracking slowly across in windows explorer, when it reaches the end the media starts playing. I thought it might be an issue with VLC but it really seems to be an issue with 'accessing' the files - when I right click them to 'open with' windows media player, I get the spinning 'working' cursor icon for 30 seconds, then it seems like all the 'loading' is done and the right click menu appears, after that opening with either VLC or Windows media player is instant. So when right-clicking the files for the right-click menu I get the same 30-45sec wait time as when I just try to straight open them. It's as if my PC can't find the file on the HDD or something. The HDD seems fine in other instances though, boot up is fast enough and once a file seems 'loaded/found' there's no lag or trouble opening it again.

For the sake of ruling it out, I have hard drive turn off set to 'Never' in the power plan.

*scratches head*
 

SteveC86

Honorable
Apr 16, 2012
18
0
10,510
Turned out to be Ad-aware Antivirus' 'Real Time protection' scanning that was doing the damage. Read about somone haveing the same problem with bitdefender on windows 8. Anyway, turned it off and everything is instant again. Who'd have thought it'd slow down a new i5 so much!

Please mark as solved :)