Today’s tip is one that I find has been irritating users on Windows 7 through to Windows 10 – especially those who download a lot of items to the same folder. When accessing the folder the user notices that it seems to take far longer to present all the files and also if they choose to sort the downloads say by the creation date – it can get a whole lot slower again.
Well there is a simple cure for this. It relates to what Windows thinks may be in this folder and how it should deal with the contents. Basically if you tell windows (or it assumes) that your download folder is full of say video files – then it attempts to optimise the folder for that type of content when in fact your folder is full of large pdf documents and application downloads instead.
So in order to improve the speed of access – we need to tell windows that the content of the folder is something else. Do this by opening windows explorer (Windows key + E) and navigating to the folder above the one you have the speed issue with. Right click and select properties of the problematic folder. When the properties are displayed – select the Customise tab and locate the combobox that says “Optimise this folder for” – and change to “General items” if that is appropriate. If you have subfolders in this slow folder you may wish to select “also apply this template to all subfolders”.
Apply the changes and now open the folder. You will see firstly a difference in speed to open but also when switching the sorting by clicking the column headers should be much more acceptable even with a large and full folder.