Windows 11 file explorer is slow, lagging, hangs!

Hi - thanks for suggestions. Yes I did, no change.

I am wondering if the drive is going to sleep somehow and takes some time to coma awake - even though the laptop itself is in a awake state. Anyone think this might be a possibility?

I'm working mostly with picture files at the momenr as it happens. But I think it also happens before I go to a specific file type. Doesn't help of course ! Still have to work with the JPGs

Microsoft has diagnostic tools to determine where the issue is. Why don't they let us run some and send the scripts? There are many different system architectures and there is a key focus on smaller local storage and paying for cloud. The problem may be rooted there. I made home movies the components require lots of space so I ended up using USB drives. It could be they slow them down intentionally to sell more cloud space. That would be awful and possibly illegal,. Folks have suggested "tweaks" but have not solved the issue. As many have said Microsoft needs to review these comments and make adjustments for us having problems.

The drive going to sleep causes a delay, but not the delay we are weeping about. The issue seems to be a backlog of background Explorer instances piling up. Normally background Explorer (not those on-screen), consume somewhere between 35MB to 80MB (why are apps so memory hungry? And why are there so many apps adding background processes they do not inform us of?). However, due to write-caches residing in memory until they are written to the drive, some seem to remain AFTER the disk has actually been updated (it looks to me like a timeout limit was exceeded, such as from a longer than usual wakeup, which for some reason does not release resources once the write finally does occur). When this accumulation (technically it is a memory leak) reaches a certain threshold, especially when checking Task Manager shows 90% memory consumed (normally it is less than 40% -- still far too much in my book), Explorer gets REALLY slow about performing tasks, delaying from a few seconds to a boatload of those seconds, because it is trying to manage all that work in the very limited amount of space remaining. We can bring up Task Manager (Cntrl-Alt-ESC) and move to the bottom of Windows Processes to find a Windows Explorer entry (or two). Normally, if there are two, one is locked up (watching them a few seconds will show one of them is still ticking away, varying in CPU usage). The unchanging one is often gargantuan (I have seen it consuming up to 9GB of memory) and is obviously locked up, which is why another instance was launched. Select it and choose Restart Task to clear and remove the non-changing one. Sometimes there is only one, or it is also exceeding hundreds of MB. If we restart that one, or if it is the only one listed, it will make the Staus Bar disappear momentarily, but then it will return (restarting a 'secondary' locked Explorer will do no such thing -- it will simply be released). This will not affect any Explorer windows that might be up on the screen. With just that, the lag disappears, until those memory leaks eventually accumulate again.

I have noticed this more frequently when using external drives. I have sometimes, but not always, gone through a 16-hour day without using the external drives and not had this issue. Using the drives, sometimes I have had to restart Windows Explorer twice a day. I am sure this all has to do with external devices. Now, let the blame game between vendors begin... (kind-a like the video driver blame game between id Software and AMD when DOOM 3 BFG Edition under Steam was played on Windows 8, until some user finally stepped and resolved it, because all they were doing was bloviating, pounding chests and claiming victimhood, instead of working together like mature adults).

(One positive thing about investigating this was that I discovered the Win11 RECENT folder location had been changed to %HOMEPATH%\Recent.)