Hello all,

Whilst my computer is fairly fast, it can sometimes take over a minute to delete the smallest of files.

I had a 1Kb plain text file on my desktop this morning and it took nearly two minutes to delete the file. The progress bar sat at 100%, but the hard drive was still working hard trying to delete the file.

I don't have any silly software bloating up my computer at all, just a very simple Windows XP installation. I do recall a similar problem with I had Windows Vista installed, but not quite as bad as this.

Any ideas, please?

Peter.

What are the specs of the machine?
How much space is left on the HDD?
How much is the HDD fragmented?

It's a fairly modern machine, which I build a few years back:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 at 2.2GHz
• 4Gb memory
• 200Gb hard drive (175Gb free space)

It is defragmented weekly. I have just checked and it is free of fragmentation.

Thanks,

Peter.

I'd do a scan for bad sectors as well.

Wonder if there are any locks on the file

That's my first thought. Windows typically sits there for about a minute waiting for it to be released before it pops up telling you "This file is in use".

However, this problem usually occurs with documents that have been opened in Office or files in a folder with "Preview" turned on. It doesn't often happen with notepad files on the desktop.

It's more likely the bin is just full. Try emptying the bin?

I set up Scandisk this afternoon and left it running for a few hours. It completed and never gave any warning messages, so I think my hard drive was free from bad sectors.


That's a good point, but I have experimented with a few files and the same happens, whether it be a text file, an image file or a music file. The shortest time to finish deleting a file was about 30 seconds, but some files took nearly 2 minutes.


The recycle bin is definitely empty. As I said in my original post, I had a similar issue with Windows Vista on this same installation, so I don't know whether it is software or hardware based, unfortunately.

Thanks all,

Peter.

If it's affecting more than one OS, it's got to be hardware issue Shirley?

It could be a software bug affecting Windows XP and Vista?

Peter.

Well it's not one I've encountered, perhaps it could be a driver issue, or hardware/software conflict?

try
my computer > properties > advanced > page file settings

set the page file to zero and then disable
save settings and restart

defrag the system

go back to the page file and reset it as required
save settings restart the system

see if this gives any improvement …