Sometimes when I try to delete files, or move or copy them to different directories, I get the usual pop-up saying that files are being deleted, etc, but then nothing happens. Whenever this happens, my computer is also “taken over” and I cannot do anything. It just locks up. After a while, I get control back, but the files are never moved, copied, or deleted. Other times, I try to do the same thing and everything works just fine. For example, five minutes ago I tried a copy operation and had my problem. I just tried the same thing, and all went well. Any ideas on what the problem is and how to fix it?
Other symptoms: mundane things that take “forever”. Five seconds for the Start menu to pop up. Ten seconds for the pop up menu of the Start menu to come up when I right-click. Eight seconds for a small notepad file to come up. And I never run any cpu hogging apps. I had my performance monitor up while these things happened and it was hitting around 15 percent or so.
But now, miraculously, all those things above are now happening immediately, and I’m running the same apps as before, i.e., none. Any help would be appreciated.
A clue. Things seem to slow down after bringing up Windows Media Player, which for some reason never responds lately when I try to bring it up and I end up having to kill it. The same thing happens when I use VLC, which I downloaded to use instead of WMP. VLC works, but I still get the slowdown after using it.
Can you give us an idea of the age and specifications on your computer.
Approx age
processor speed
amount of memory installed
laptop/desktop
In addition - is the hard disk that contains your OS near full? Under 20 GB or so and really, really weird things start happening.
Edit: I should mention though that I have the exact same problem on my Vista laptop, minus the slowdowns. It seems to specifically only happen to files/folders on the desktop, if you go into “properties” they’re all marked read-only and not even the forces of nature can turn off the read-only status for some reason.
Sometimes files get “locked” on to programs. As one poster noted, WMP (Windows Media Player) is really good at this. I will play a video then play another, then try to move the first video and it won’t allow me to. For some reason Vista thinks it’s being used by WMP (Maybe it is in some technical way).
I noticed other odd things like when I move a folder if it has subfolders sometimes it won’t let me sometimes it will
I would guess that somehow programs are attaching themselves to files and don’t let go when you close out of them. I have never had an issue moving files when I reboot computer. This way I know no files are “attached” to programs.
Approx age - 2 years
processor speed - 2.3Ghz
amount of memory installed - C Drive 16.5GB left; D Drive - 145GB left
laptop/desktop - desktop