Windows explorer is the worst application ever! ...by MS

[emperor_black]

anyone have problem with this application? It keeps crashing all the time...says "Not responding" and things like that. Hogs up tons of memory and is the ultimate pain in the butt when displaying network mounted drives. Drives me nuts.

Not to mention, refreshing takes a while and just hangs freezing up the entire comp when you unplug something like a digital camera and you were viewing the pics in the camera.

No wonder, its "hidden" under accessories when its one of the most used in any login session.

[marcus]

I agree. Windows explorer is slow, prone to crashing, and ugly. I am also kind of prejudiced against GUIs, but that is just me. I miss the old "MS-dos prompt" they had in earlier versions of windows (I am only half kidding on that - lol)

[emperor_black]

actually, you are not wrong! I am seriously contemplating reinstalling cygwin on my work laptop and using it for navigating to directories and viewing stuff.

[marcus]

At work, I use linux. They have been threatening to move us to windows for a while, but it hasn't happened yet. I dread the day when they finally do this as I hate working on windows

At least I'll have a decent browser though :ROTF::ROTF::ROTF:

[Spivonious]

If you miss the command prompt, just go Start-Run-"cmd" and you'll have it back.

And emperor, if you want Windows Explorer without going into Accessories, just open up My Computer and click the folders button in the toolbar.

Slowness while dealing with mapped drives has always been there, even back in Windows 95. If my memory serves me, Vista was much faster for this, but that was last Summer using Beta 2, so who knows what the retail version is like.

Windows :headbang:

[emperor_black]

wow, just installed cygwin and copied a 2 GB folder on a network-share to my local C:/temp in under 2 mins. Windows explorer is yet to refresh contents of the network share.

[Baum83]

Explorer and networks stuff is just a huge PITA. If possible, do yourself a favor and just access lan folders with start->run->\\computername\foldername, that way it'll at least show up in less than 20 minutes.

[thetroy]

I've never had any real problems. Windows gives you a little bit of hassle all of the time while Linux gives you a FUCKING TON of hassle making anything work the first time but then it usually works well once it is set up (until you change something else of course)

Oh and to access windows explorer just hold the "Windows" key and press "E"

[emperor_black]

I'll give you another way to access explorer, right click on 'Start' and choose explorer. Accessing is not the problem the problem is, in its working! It simply hogs up too much memory. Right click on task bar and choose Task Manager. Choose the Processes tab and see how much the damn explorer is using. Mine is using 18MB and its not even up. You cant close the damn process. Windows will crash if you do that. More mysteries of the "spaghetti" code for you gentlemen!

[marcus]

If you miss the command prompt, just go Start-Run-"cmd" and you'll have it back.

OK , you called my bluff. I was completely kidding about missing that POS. I prefer CLIs to GUIs but using DOS is painful

[rjohnstone]

I use Vista Ultimate at home and XP SP2 at work and never have Explorer problems.
Haven't had a BSOD in YEARS.

Most issues are generally user caused (installing bad drivers or using incompatible hardware).

Using "start->run->\\computername\foldername" is no different than mapping a drive.
The same system calls are used. The only difference is a drive letter is not assigned and the connection is not made persistant.

Slow response while mapping a drive is typically an infrastructure issue.
Can be anything from network latency, to an overloaded AD server.

[rjohnstone]

I'll give you another way to access explorer, right click on 'Start' and choose explorer. Accessing is not the problem the problem is, in its working! It simply hogs up too much memory. Right click on task bar and choose Task Manager. Choose the Processes tab and see how much the damn explorer is using. Mine is using 18MB and its not even up. You cant close the damn process. Windows will crash if you do that. More mysteries of the "spaghetti" code for you gentlemen!

Your confusing the Explorer shell function with the Explorer file browser function.
If you kill Explorer.exe, you are basically killing the desktop. That's why Windows "appears" to crash. It actually hasn't. Just run explorer.exe from task manager and the desktop comes back.
And 18MB... that's TINY.
Mine runs at 82MB. But I have a ton of monitoring tools that hook into the process.

[shobet]

I've not used a windows machine in the best part of 6 months. Can't say I miss it that much. I've spent a lot of time shouting at older versions of Windows, it's much more stable than it used to be. Remember 3.1 oh dear god what a 'mare and ME was an abortion. I've not tried Vista yet as I can't be arsed. I believe the first service pack is out or is imminent so that might improve some of the issues I've read about it.

Linux on the desktop is stable these days, you have all the apps. you ever need for a normal user and they are free. Linux on servers is rock solid, the majority of our core stuff is on it and I find it easier to use, who needs all that X11 windowing stuff, the CLI is where it's at baby! Documentation for some open source stuff does leave a lot to be desired though. I think it's one of the major problems people converting have to deal with. But it's getting there. The various distros. all have their little quirks but it keeps life interesting! Debian is my disrto of choice at the moment.

If you're a long term Windows user it's quite hard changing to a Mac or Linux, but in my opinion variety is the spice of life!

[emperor_black]

I'm strongly considering getting a mac for my next PC. Its supposedly built on the UNIX kernel and should be much more stable than windows.

Shobet, never used debian. Isn't freebsd similar to debian? I've just used sles, rhel and freebsd. Rhel is my fav. but yeah, there's still a lot that needs to be done to get it to the same level of "ease of use" as windows, but its getting there VERY FAST. the gnome & kde desktops looks and feels just like a windows, but more clear and faster.

[rjohnstone]

I use both Windows and Macs. OS X is very nice to work in, but most things I use are only written for Windows.

Not to fond of Linux builds. Still have to "work" to hard to make them work the way I want them too.