Windows 11 file explorer is slow, lagging, hangs!

"It's windows 7 with layers and layers of obnoxious skins on top."

I wish it was. Windows 7 can be used productively and there are settings for most things you'd need to change.

To me, Windows 11 looks more like a Windows designed by people who never had to use a computer to work in their live. Or if they do, they probably just open Chrome and do everything in there.

I installed Directory Opus now which at least gets rid of the file explorer nonsense, but there's still so much #**%!!& Windows 11 keeps throwing at me.

Removing network folders from Quick access worked for me!

I tried many of the suggestions throughout this thread. Thanks much to all of you for sharing, but none of them seemed to make a significant difference for me. My performance issue with Explorer has mainly been that when opening folders, especially folders with many files or a lot of subfolders, it takes a few seconds to load before it will respond. If I'm trying to drill down into a folder that is several layers deep, it has been frustrating to double click, wait 3 or 4 seconds, double click, wait 6 or 7 seconds, double click, wait 4 or 5 seconds, etc. In trying some of the suggestions above, I noticed the following setting and I believe this seems to have resolved my issue. I can now click through folders much more instantaneously similar to what I had experienced in Windows 10. Sharing in case this is useful to others.

Thanks for your reply. I have a brand new desktop computer (less than a month) with a 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700 2.10 GHz processor and 128GB of RAM. It has 1 TB of storage so it is nowhere near being full on storage.. Our IT guy has been all over my system and has tried each of the things mentioned on this thread plus made sure permissions are correct for all my files and folders (they were), turned the ESET antivirus off (even though this doesn't monitor network files), and we don't have bitlocker running at all, etc. We have checked it all and can't find any other sources suggesting anything else. My files are not humungous. They are mostly pdf's that were converted from Microsoft documents. We aren't sure what 3rd party visual or functional enhancements would be that you mentioned. The oddest thing is that we kept my old work computer that had Windows 10 on it. So I can remote into it if needed for a little while. I've tried all these issues on the Windows 10 file explorer with NO ISSUES. And I don't have any programs on this computer that the Win 10 version doesn't have on it. In fact, I have alot less programs and files on this new computer. I'm at the point of starting over and installing Window 10 on this new computer. It will suck to make him reload it all but I can't live with a computer that won't allow me to move, delete and rename files. Oh and I've tried the cut and paste. Does the same thing - gives the error that the file is open.

Is there a number you can call with Microsoft about this issue? Or are message boards the only options? Thanks for your help again.

I know it may not be super helpful, but I'm responding simply to say: SAME HERE. My experience is extremely similar to the user above. Zero issues on previous Win10 laptop, which has less programs, lower spec'ed hardware. Unbelievable!