2

I have a Windows 11 media archive folder containing 5,000+ media files, mostly jpg, mov & mp4. By default, the first time File Explorer opens the folder it reads every one of the files to extract metadata related to when the media was first captured/taken.

This is annoying because it's slow and the information isn't stored to be available between reboots; it gets re-read every time the folder is accessed after a reboot.

Is there a way to prevent Windows from doing this? I've come across various suggestions that you invalidate the PropertyHandler (in the registry) for the file types being read. But I tried doing that and it doesn't work -- the reading still takes place (not surprising, perhaps, since the suggestions were for Windows 10 and earlier and it's possible Microsoft changed something in Windows 11).

BTW, I also tried deleting the Date Taken column from that folder's view and replacing it with Date Created (which is a file system attribute and not embedded within the file's metadata). But that doesn't work, either. Windows just seems determined to read the metadata in all those media files regardless of my wishes in the matter... :)

Mark Olbert
  • 409

3 Answers3

1

There are several reasons for Explorer to be slow on a large folder. This can be because of metadata properties, but also because of thumbnail generation.

Both subjects were already treated on our site:

Prevent Windows Explorer from trying to extract metadata

The accepted answer shows how to use the registry to disable the property handler for .wav. You may extend it easily to cover jpg, mov & mp4 files.

How to prevent Windows Explorer from slowly reading file content to create metadata?

The poster summarized all the suggestions in his post, but read the answers for details. These include Explorer settings, Property metadata Handlers, thumbnails and caches. Even if some suggestions didn't work for the poster, they might work for you.

harrymc
  • 498,455
1

This happens typically because you have one or more attributes in a column that Explorer cannot get from the file's record in the directory, for example 'camera model', or 'kbit/sec' for mp3 - but not all of them are as obvious!
To verify, try to remove columns until the problem is gone - leave only name, size, type to be sure. If this solves it, make sure to not add the 'slowing' columns back, and save the layout as default for all folders.

Aganju
  • 10,161
0

I found these solutions are not work on Windows 11, so I asked the question in answers.microsoft.com. (link) It solves my problem.

For short: use WinSetView to change your Windows views of Pictures, Videos ... to something not "Details" or edit the Columns manually.

destination
  • 11