Tech Tidbits

Was getting this 40-90 second delay in showing the contents of some folders when I clicked on them. Answer turns out to be an easy fix, but hard to get information from Microsoft.

The major reason for the slowdown is how Windows Explorer treats zip files. WE wants to treat each zip file as a folder, so it spends time reading through each root folder in that directory to find out how many files or folders are in that folder. With the zip file being in the directory you have clicked on, WE is slowed to a drag looking through each compressed file to get the names of every file in that folder

There are three things to do to resolve the issue, and I did items 1 and 2 but the real fix or speed up came with number 2.

1. In Control Panel/Folder Options/View, set or check "Do Not Cache Thumbnails"
2. Move all zip files in the offending folder into a separate folder
3. In a Command Window, type regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll This will "unload" the dll that treats zip files as folders system-wide, not just in the directory where you may think you are having the problem

Yes, this is about Vista – Microsoft's entry in the "Worst Software Contest" (in my humble opinion) as far as I can tell. From the problems reported by friends, business associates and my students, it's a bust. Now, even in the trade press, it's getting panned some more.

Writing in "eWeek", Lawrence Walsh says "It (Vista) did not fail for not trying." Maybe they tried too hard, because major corporations stayed away from Vista in droves. Even Microsoft has sort of admitted a problem, in that after calling a "drop dead" date for XP (which still works), they had so much flack, they have extended the date to May 31, 2009 for system installers and other manufacturers.

Walsh continues by saying, "Two years on, Vista is nothing short of an incompressible failure". Know what I have help people with, it's a "pain" – bigtime. You can read the whole article yourself – its called "Ode to Broken Windows".