Improve Performance of File Explorer in Windows 10 October 17, 2016October 19, 2018 Vikas Windows Along with the cool features of Windows 10, you come across several drawbacks caused due to some of these new features. One of these issues is the slowness of the File Explorer. Here are some tips for improving the speed of the File Explorer in Windows 10. Recommended: Optimize Windows 10 If you’re using Windows 10, you must have noticed a performance decline. It is common for old systems that were designed to run previous versions of the operating system. However, you’re at luck to make your old computer fully compatible with the Win 10. All you need to do is to maintain it. Some activities that you can perform to speed up Windows 10 and file explorer performance include cleaning system junk regularly for better speed. You can do these tasks using an automated tool such as ST Cleaner. Get this software here, and speed up File Explorer in Windows 10. Do a System File Check Many problems can occur when there are issues in the system files. And its always a good first step to perform a System File Check (SFC). Microsoft has provided an end-to-end guide to do this and you can find it at this link. Enable Windows Search Service Windows has a service to index files/folders in order to speed up the file/folder searching. This also helps to load up the file/folders inside a folder. Hence, it is always good to keep this service enabled to be run on startup. Start → Control Panel. Open Administrative Tools Right click on Services and click on Run as administrator. Scroll down for Windows Search service and start it. Go to Properties of Windows Search and set the Startup Type to Automatic or Automatic (Delayed Start) Change optimization type for the folder This may have happened when the file indexing is performed in the background. When your folders contain large files (such as videos), Windows will scan and store the file attributes whenever you try to access the folder. The best way to avoid this is to tell Windows not to optimize the corresponding folder for videos, but to general files. In File Explorer, hit your middle finger to move to the folder properties. The go to the Customize tab. Under the Optimize this folder for drop-down menu, select General items. You can select Also apply this template to all subfolders. Click OK. I think this is due to the indexing and ‘optimizations’ happening in the background. Your folder most probably has large video files and the system scans and stores the video attributes every time you open the folder. Disable Quick access Windows 10 has introduced a new Quick access view to replace the Favorite Folders list in previous Windows versions. This Quick access view will show you a list of frequently used folders and recent files. A considerable amount of processing is required to suggest this list, hence it will show some symptoms of lagging. There are two possible solutions you can apply to increase the performance of File Explorer to avoiding Quick access. Change the usual view to This PC. Stop displaying recent files/ folder on Quick access. Open the File Explorer. File → Change folder and search options. Unselect Show recently used files in Quick Access and/ or Show recently used folder in Quick Access. Click Apply and then OK. Apart from all the above solutions, Windows 10 is still known to have a lot of performance issues, especially related to File Management. Hence, it is always better to have an SSD to run Windows 10. If you can afford one, it is always better to install Windows 10 on an SSD and it will show a significant improvement in its performance.