[SOLVED] Windows Explorer taking forever to load ?

[Exploding PSU]

Hello everyone, I have a head-scratcher here that isn't hardware related, and I'm at my wit's end.

My dad called me the other day, saying his laptop "changed". Now, please go easy on him (and me), I mean he's my dad, so I'm sure you'll understand. Turned out, his work laptop had updated itself to Windows 11 without him agreeing on anything. It broke a lot of stuff (mostly Outlook integrations and what not) and that took around a day to set everything up.

But, another issue popped up. The Windows Explorer on his laptop now takes forever to load. When I click the icon, the window opens, but then it's stuck with "green loading bar" slowly filling up the address bar. It would stuck in "Home" folder for two minutes before it would be responsive again. Then it would work normally (mostly) as long as I don't click the "This PC" folder. If I open another explorer window, it would get stuck the same way, with the green loading bar and stuff.

I've tried several things from around the internet and this forum, including stuff like:

• Disabling search indexing.
• Reverting Windows 11 explorer to Windows 10 (which didn't work, nothing happened).
• Uninstalling OneDrive.
• Ran the standard sfc /scannow and DISM commands proposed by the people at Microsoft's website.

I can confirm the SSD in the laptop is still in good health (after all, the explorer worked fine before the Windows 11 update).

Is there anything else I could do? Thank you...

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Have you tried resetting the networks stuff? Also, run the networking troubleshooter and see if it finds anything. It could be due to some of the share drive he might be connected to.

 

[Exploding PSU]

Have you tried resetting the networks stuff? Also, run the networking troubleshooter and see if it finds anything. It could be due to some of the share drive he might be connected to.

That didn't cross my mind. Let me give it a try, hang on...

 

[Deleted member 14196]

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...g-mapped/f78a7c6e-ff8c-4ba2-96b2-b2ac0f1c569c

 

[Deleted member 14196]

https://www.kapilarya.com/fix-slow-access-to-network-drives-in-windows-10

 

[Exploding PSU]

Have you tried resetting the networks stuff? Also, run the networking troubleshooter and see if it finds anything. It could be due to some of the share drive he might be connected to.

Sorry for the late reply, I think this one's correct. It was network related indeed.

What happened was there was one network drive / shared folder (I think that's what it was called, it basically connected to a file server somewhere in his office) couldn't connect because the username / password was wrong. Because he had no use of the folder we decided to just disconnect it. The problem went away.

When you mentioned network I tried to just disconnect the laptop from WiFI networks and yes, the explorer opened without problems. That single shared folder was the culprit.

Thank you