Microsoft Will Preload Windows 11 File Explorer to Fix Bad Performance

It’s almost like they follow a software version of Intel’s old tick-tock pattern. A version that’s super experimental, but unstable and flaky (95, Me, Vista, 8, 11) and a version that irons out the wrinkles to make a solid OS (98, 2000/Xp, 7, 10).

Microsoft could easily make one of the best general purpose OSes. They have a lot of cool stuff in Windows, especially for devs. There's native git integration in file explorer coming, PowerToys has great utilities (peek, fancy zones, command palette), WSL & WSL w/ graphics, terminal, native SSH now, sudo, winget & automation with it using DSC from a simple yaml file, and some of the best backwards compatibility in the industry.

Yet they squander it all by violating their users trust and consent, and consistently ignoring their users feedback.

That's what makes Windows 11 so frustrating for me, even though I've already switched to macOS ever since the M1 air. I would go back to Windows in a heart beat if they got their act together. I always liked Windows. It's been my main OS for a long time, even though I've always kept a Linux machine around and macs here and there, Windows was my go to.

Normally I would say all MS needs to do is focus on putting out a good OS, keep focusing on all the dev QOL stuff they put in and dump the user hostile behavior, but I think its too late for them at this point. They've burned every bridge.

"We’re exploring preloading File Explorer in the background to help improve File Explorer launch performance. This shouldn’t be visible to you, outside of File Explorer hopefully launching faster when you need to use it. If you have the change, if needed there is an option you can uncheck to disable this called “Enable window preloading for faster launch times” in File Explorer’s Folder Options, under View. Looking forward to your feedback! If you do encounter any issues, please file them in the Feedback Hub under Files Folders and Online Storage > File Explorer Performance, or Files Folders and Online Storage > File Explorer."

Have you seen those movies where a small town in the US holds a festival or carnival with heavy floats on top of a car? That is the UI they've implemented in Win11, one interface mounted on top of another, therefore overwhelming slowness, a botched job that only shows disinterest, perhaps with the aim of forcing users to upgrade by investing as few resources as possible in it.

Linux is the antithesis of this, with a long history of slow file explorers/managers that finally stand out today in terms of speed and features, fortunately. (this is to support the other user's comment about Dolphin (my choice when Linux) and Nautilus.

There's long been an option to make it multi-process, but the cost of that option has increased with every release since 95. If I remember correctly, back in the 95 days that would spawn a new explorer process per window.

These days, probably since tabs or so, when you check this option it spawns exactly one other process, even for many windows. The second process has over 100 threads, the shell process normally spawns around 40 when you open a window, only 20 of which exit immediately when you close the window, the rest stick around for fairly arbitrary periods of time.

Note though about 2/3rds of the threads on my system are rooted in the nvidia driver thunks, I really don't know why so many - is it a side effect of the xaml port?

anyway, no idea what the preloading exactly will be doing, but it does sound like a hack over debt. it'd feel better if there was more process isolation being added to the desktop environment, but you know, it's an old desktop OS, so if one window wants to screw with another window, YOLO! On the flip side making stuff like komorebi is trivial on the platform and there is some nicety to that as long as you trust everything you ever run.