I've just migrated from XP to Vista and one issue I can't resolve is why right clicking on large files ( around 20gb - typically hard drive image files ) takes forever - along with a subsequent delete command which then comes up with a dialog box saying it's preparing ........ and it basically takes minutes to do what XP did in a split second.
This is on an attached USB external hard drive which I have since put back on my XP system to test and it still works fine.
There's no problem with small files, so it's definitely something to do with the file size that Vista is handling in a different way.
There seems to be lots of history about Vista performance issues - particularly around handling large files but all the fixes I've seen seem to have been put right in SP1 which I am using. I have also installed all updates, both critical and optional, so can only conclude my system is as up to date as it can be.
I don't believe it's a hard drive or fragmentation issue as it still works fine from my XP box.
The only other thing I've tried is to disable indexing on the external drive in question but this doesn't seem to make any difference either.
Has anyone come across this type of problem?
Thanks

Try doing a hard drive defrag in windows....

Also, what are the specs of your computer?

Cohen

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
The spec is a new 2.4 duo core dell E6400 laptop with 3gb RAM - it should fly ! But sadly everything I've done with this new machine with Vista Business is no better than my 5 year old XP laptop with a 1.6M single processor with half that RAM
It's very dissapointing !
As I said earlier I don't believe defrag to be the issue as it works instantantly when connected to one of my XP boxes.
Do you think Vista will perform that much different on a fragmented drive ?

Maybe it has something to do with Vista and how it interacts with slow HDDs. You have 5400 RPM drive?

OK, a few questions..... for you kgee....

What is your hard drive, IDE or Sata???
What is your RPM of you hard drive???

I have vista... SATA, 7,200RPM and it's fine....

But... i have a folder full of music, about 20 GBs and it takes a little while to load... so it's not really a big deal.....

But a defrag does do some work!

Cohen