Windows 10: File Explorer slow and Start menu icons not highlighting after update

I used the MCT, which effectively reinstalls Windows, but it leaves all your files and applications in place. All that was affected were a few minor settings, like custom icons on some folders, default view for some folders, etc. Didn't suffer anything more serious than that.

Warning: It took almost 2 hours to do the repair, so set it off when you don't want to use the machine. Was worth the wait though. It all works like before now.

Hope that helps.

 

Sad to say, it's doing it again *Sad

Anyone any other ideas?

 

Hi,

These shadow copies are made by an application you need to identify. I suggest you to disable all non microsoft auto-run applications.
I see you have Sql on your machine ! disable it from auto-starting.
Disable also Hyper-v.

Restart your computer and see ...

delete these shadow copies using the procedure I gave earlier...

 

Do you have any ideas what runs shadow copies? I have SQL Server, but have had it since I first set up the machine, and it's never done this before. I removed Hyper-V completely over a week ago, and have deleted all folders related to it, so that can't be it.

Anything else you can suggest? Here are all the programs I have installed. Can you see anything that looks suspicious?

Thanks again.

 

Run msconfig and uncheck all non Microsoft services...

 

You can use a Sysinternals tool to observe system runtime dependencies. It's called Process Explorer; it's free; and it's from Microsoft itself (MS bought Sysinternals in 2009 if memory serves, mostly to buy the services of Mark Russinovich, who's now a big dog in the Windows Azure group). For any running processs, Process Explorer shows you which services they invoke (they're called dependent services because they depend from parent processes). This should let you see which process is calling VSS, and then decide how to deal with it.
HTH,
--Ed--

 

Thanks Ed, I have that running, but am not sure what I'm looking for! There's so much in there, and it's changing so fast, how do I work out what is using VSS.

Thanks for the reply. If you could give any more info it would be great.

 

Here's an item at social.technet.ms you might find helpful: Volume Shadow Copy - High CPU Usage?
. You can also visit the Process Explorer forum at Windows Sysinternals and poke around there. I've seen some tutorials on the tool that are helpful, but I can't recall (or quickly find) them right now. I'll post again if I come across them after I hit my morning blog post outline (I'm trolling for a topic right now, in fact, but answering questions as I go through the forums).
HTH,
--Ed--

 

Thanks for the link Ed, I had already read it. Trouble is, I'm not really sure what I'm doing here. I'm way over my head in all of this. I just want a machine that responds!

Anyway, I had a look at Process Explorer, but couldn't see anything that looked like it might be the culprit. The processes at the top of the list (when sorted by CPU usage) changed the whole time, not really indicating any one process as the cause.

The thing that puzzles me is that the main problem only seems to happen when I use File Explorer, the machine is generally OK apart from that. Not always, but pretty much. However, whenever I try to navigate the file system with File Explorer, the CPU usage goes sky high and File Explorer responds really slowly. If I navigate the file system from an "Open File" dialog box from an application (like Notepad or whatever), I can usually navigate without problems. No idea what that means.

Anyway, while navigating with File Explorer, I kept an eye on During that time, I kept an eye on the CPU usage in Process Explorer, but couldn't see any one process dominating it.

I started Windows Performance Monitor, then did some double-clicking in File Explorer and saved the system information. Maybe if someone could take a look, it might shed some light on what's going on here. You can grab a copy here.

I don't know if you can suggest anything else. I'd love to be able to fix this, but I really don't know what I'm doing here.

Thanks again to everyone for all the help.

 

Now that you precise that the issue is mainly related to File Explorer, I can tell you Yes. Your Explorer causes CPU to spike ! and if you take a look at the call stacks in WPA, you can see that QTTabBar is involved.

Disable or uninstall QTTabBar plugin and test.

 

Hi zinou, thanks for the speedy response.

I tried uninstalling QTTabBar, but it didn't make any difference. I must be honest and say I didn't expect it to, as I've had that plug-in installed ever since I set up the machine 18 months ago (it's one of my must-have tools for any machine), and have never seen this problem until recently. I haven't updated the plug-in either, so it's not like that has changed.

Also, it's worth pointing out that although the problem is most noticeable when using File Explorer, I do see it at other times. For example, I just hit the Reply button to an email, and there was a noticeable delay after the window appeared, but before I could type. Similarly, when I use TortoiseMerge, the window appears, but can be blank for up to 15 seconds before the contents appear. This was almost instant until a couple of weeks ago.

Don't know where this leaves me. Any further ideas? Thanks again.

 

Can you do another trace recording while reproducing one of those issues ? May be another trace can give us more insights !

 

OK, here's what I did...

• made a spurious change to a file in visual studio
• started performance monitor and set it recording
• in vs, right-clicked the file in the pending changes window and chose show changes
• at around 17 seconds into the trace, the window appeared
• after about 5 seconds (faster than usual, but still a lot slower than before) the contents appeared
• stopped the recording

You can grab the file here.

The odd thing is that right now, the machine is behaving itself!

 

I just stumbled upon this article at MajorGeeks. It may be relevant to the overall discussion: Repair Common VSS issues with Tweaking.com - Repair Volume Shadow Copy Service - MajorGeeks.
HTH,
--Ed--

 

Try the tool Ed give you.

Also take a look at the events log and search if there is events (Errors or Waring) related to shadow volume copy.