I find that this happens when you enter folders that have media files like audio files, video files and so on. One way to fix it is to enter one such folder, then remove all columns (like file name, date modified - those columns) and remove all the columns that are media metadata columns. Things like track length, artist, contributing artist or whatever else, then click in the File explorer menu on the 3 dots icon (**) and select View tab, then click 'Apply to folders'. This will apply the column and view settings that you just applied to all such folders.

Now all folders with media files open immediately. Also if you want no wait for video files folders, right click in the folder and select 'View -> Details or View -> List or some other option where it doesn't create thumbnails and it'll load even quicker.

I feel like most interns would be smart enough to know that you should lazy load these metrics. It's incredible that MS put this into production.

> remove all columns (like file name, date modified - those columns) and remove all the columns that are media metadata columns [...] click in the File explorer menu on the 3 dots icon (*) and select View tab, then click 'Apply to folders' [...] click in the folder and select 'View -> Details or View -> List or some other option

I'm sorry, this is very funny to me in the context of the person upthread arguing about how great "agentic OSes" are. Some people seem to believe that we're living in the future, but I'm pretty sure we're still stuck in Windows '95.

This was never a problem in older Windows versions.

> remove all columns (like file name, date modified - those columns) and remove all the columns that are media metadata columns.

Surely you don't mean remove all columns, and if you did you wouldn't have to also specify removing media metadata columns?

It's not just media files. I'm forced to use Windows 11 on my work PC, and I had to disable the new shell extensions to make the file explorer usable again. It's noticeably faster without the new UI.

It's less work at this point to just wipe the drive and install linux.

Looking up media details is of course one of the main reasons. Thank you for sharing this information. However, all the folders are already configured as general folders and this one specifically has a bunch of PDF files.

When such basic tasks are failing spectacularly, nobody can have any confidence that complex things can be achieved reliably. Instead of spying on their users and trying to squeeze more and more money from them, they should first focus on making a great product and work on making it better, not researching ways to enshitify things.