98 SE: Exploring hangs when deleting folders

[Sashanan]

Every so often I do a major cleanup of my data partition, throwing out folders, sometimes big ones. The thing is that if I delete more than just a few files - say, if I do a couple of folders with several hundred files each - my explorer tends to hang. It deletes the files properly, then it doesn't accept input anymore, any other apps I have running slow down to a crawl, and the problem is not corrected until I shut down Explorer from the task manager (and get the "this program is not responding" message).

It's little more than an annoyance, but I'd still like to know: is this a common issue or a signal of bigger trouble to come?

"Much that I bound, I could not free. Much that I freed returned to me."
(Lee Wilson Dodd)

 

[Sashanan]

Meh, don't create topics before the first coffee of the day. Make that topic title "EXPLORER hangs when deleting folders".


"Much that I bound, I could not free. Much that I freed returned to me."
(Lee Wilson Dodd)

 

[Jontmke]

Have you run a Scandisk and defrag lately? The most likely reason it is hanging is because it is trying to update the FAT, and if the files were in hundreds of little pieces all over the hard drive it will take a long time to finish. Especially if the file entries were invalid in the first place.

Jon

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. (Bertrand Russell)

 

[Sashanan]

Don't remember exactly when my last defrag was (which in itself is a sign it's time for a new one) and as for Scandisk; recently, but I don't think I've *ever* done a full surface scan. So wouldn't hurt to reserve a little time for that?


"Much that I bound, I could not free. Much that I freed returned to me."
(Lee Wilson Dodd)

 

[Jontmke]

You should not need a surface scan, but I'll bet a defrag would really help.

Jon

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. (Bertrand Russell)

 

[Sashanan]

Coming back to this one, I have now recently defragged without trouble (one overnight session did the trick), however when I did another folder cleanup last night I still had the same problem. When I delete small folders, no problem. But as soon as I've once deleted a folder with a lot of data in it, suddenly the windows explorer functions erratically.

Every time I delete a file, copy or move some or create a new folder, it stops responding for roughly 20-30 seconds before it finally does what I told it to do. It then keeps up this behavior until I once go into the task manager and end the task from there (this throws the "program not responding" message). When I've done that and boot up the windows explorer again, it works fine until I delete a large folder another time, and the whole problem starts from scratch.

It's really just an annoyance - doesn't happen *that* often that I throw away huge folders and just "resetting" the explorer through the task manager solves the problem - but it still puzzles me that this continues to happen even after the defrag. Should I be worried?


"Much that I bound, I could not free. Much that I freed returned to me."
(Lee Wilson Dodd)

 

[mattjurado]

Don't worry about this one. This came up in a thread not too long ago, its a bug in 98. We've done hundreds of different machines, 98 explorer has this bug that does exactly what you describe. I've just learned to use the deltree command from a dos prompt, instead of deleting large directories through explorer.

Matt J.

 

[Sashanan]

Thanks, that's a reassurance. Worries about serious problems to come have diminished by 30%.


"Much that I bound, I could not free. Much that I freed returned to me."
(Lee Wilson Dodd)

 

[edemiere]

I have run this problem down and fixed it on my PC at home.

What I had to do was get the latest chipset drivers and FORCE Windows 98 to install those drivers by using the "Update Driver" through Device Manager for each item that the chipset drivers updated.

Once I did this my "hanging" was cured. I hope it will prove as successful for you.

By the way, simply running (for example) the VIA 4-in-1 drivers install program isn't adequate. You should just run teh 4-in-1 drivers (so they extract to your TEMP directory and then make a copy so you have the extracted files) and then manually point EACH device to that directory to install that driver. (i.e. AGP, USB, IDE etc...)

Good luck!