Solved Strange behavior in File Explorer: Libraries present issues if they are customized.

Hey peeps!

I'll describe this the best I can: Since the April 30th Preview Update, I'm having an issue where Libraries exhibit two issues:

• Two of them are slow to open in a window, when they used to open just normally.
• For the ones that are customized with locations I added to have easier access to many things I organize in levels, if you happen to click over the library in the navigation pane to open it, you can see contents normally, but if you click over the same place again, I get a "Working on it" prompt and gets stuck there, if I click it again, then the contents appear again, This is intermittent, one click shows nothing, one click shows content. This shouldn't happen.
• The rest of File Explorer works normally, it's fast to load stuff, Libraries are the ones exhibiting this issue
• If I reset Libraries to default, they stop behaving strangely.

My laptop and second PC (for Mom) work normally, and my laptop has the same customized libraries, but works as usual. It's just my desktop. I tried everything I could think of: Reset file associations to default, cleaning up thumbnails, restoring views for all folders and trying on a fresh local account (It happens there as well). I can't seem to fix this no matter what.

Any idea why this may be happening? It started right after updating to this exact update, I've ran dism and sfc commands, system is clean and snappy, it's just... "this".

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide peeps.

Cheers!

I suggest while viewing this thread, open co-pilot, and type "Please analyze this thread"
Co-pilot takes every point you have defined and gives a succint answer. Bottom line is it seems to almost certainly point to metadata corruption.
Copilot gives a very long solution. If you get stumped just ask co-pilot how to perform any step
Image you system first..

I ran this through ChatGPT... but honestly, I prefer to wait for another human for help. I'm an old schooled old man lol.
Thanks anyways!

Well, some circumstances have made me observe something, the slow opening seems to be related with Defender, if I turn the AV off, the 2 libraries that load slowly now load quickly. It's funny because they do load quickly if you open them for any reason before (cached).

The only thing there still is the "Working on it..." bug when you click over and over the libraries...

So... means it's a Windows thing. Next update "should" fix this I guess.

I declare this as solved.

Thanks peeps!

NEW UPDATE:

I finally fixed this bug and found the culprit... Apparently, Windows Search was causing issues with libraries, it even caused the SSD to go 100% usage when trying to read small files (like 2 MB for example). This also caused this strange refresh issues and slow opening of certain libraries, like my work library or the software one where I store fonts. This was especially noticeable the more files you had in a folder.

How to fix:

• Open services.msc (either through task manager, or Win+R and typing that exact command)
• Look for Windows Search
• Stop the service and set it to disabled and wait a couple of seconds
• Re-enable the service (set it to Automatic (Delayed Start)
• Start the service
• Profit

I've rebooted a couple of times and things are back to normal, explorer works fast as usual and libraries no longer exhibit erratic behaviors.

Hope this help somebody if you ever find yourself in the same issue as me without any explanation lol.

I've seen something similar with 'working on it'.

It's possible part of my issue is having NAS folders in libraries along with normal user docs, photos, etc folders. These NAS folders aren't indexed and can't be added to libraries - an issue for many years. It's easy enough to get music, videos, photos NAS folders into libraries via the Media Player and Photos app but for docs and downloads I've always had to use the trick of adding a local folder to a library, deleting it, and then creating link to NAS folders using the same folder name.

The 'working on it' issue perhaps coincided with the recent feature "With this update, View and Sort preferences are preserved in folders such as Downloads and Documents when apps launch File Explorer directly to those locations".

My fix was to click within empty space of every affected library folder and choose Group By <None> and then Group By <Folder Location>.

Clearing Group By seemed to fix 'working on it' but has to be repeated in all places such as File Explorer and various download and save as dialogue boxes - hence the thought it's somehow linked to that folder preferences change.

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But I'm now seeing an issue with the "Recommended" in Start menu (i.e. recent files) - viewed or edited files aren't reliably showing up, especially, it seems, with Office documents - non Office and some random Office docs do appear esp. if newly created so it's hard to pin down the issue, settings changes etc doesn't help.

NAS locations are especially tricky with File explorer, they tend to slowdown things. I believe they cause conflicts since yu can't index said locations, which causes Windows Search to go a bit crazy, and File Explorer to wait for things to be ready to display. About Office.com files, have you disabled "Show Office.com files" in File explorer options? That could explain it. I've disabled that option and I only can see local files in the recommended section.

I'd didnt mean office.com as such but Word and Excel files - which are now no longer showing in the start menu after being accessed or edited - although some newly created do randomly show up.

That "Show Office.com files" doesnt appear in my File explorer options - or anything mentioned here Enable or Disable Show Files from Office.com in File Explorer Home in Windows 11

Ive haven't determined whether it affects only office files in NAS folders or in user/documents on c: too but non-office files on NAS folders are OK.

Excel and Word apps are correctly recording their recent files and accesses appear in %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent Items folder so File Explorer is OK - it seems its whatever (background) process updates the Recommended section has broken for these file types - or a recent 365 update has broken something.

Despite positive suggestions about W11 improving I'm finding more things breaking over time than useful additions with each update.

I began to wonder if the files not showing in the Recommended section of Start menu were ones I'd previously marked as 'Remove From List' . I thought to give Copilot a go and its initial suggestions were around clearing Recent / AutomaticDestinations and CustomDestinations (a possible cache of files not to show) and toggle off and on the various settings for recent files. This didnt 100% fix, but after further prompts Copilot suggested to Reset-AppxPackage StartMenuExperienceHost which does seem to have restored the Recommended section for recent files.