Slow Explorer on Battery

[aHumanError]

I'm a photographer, and if I'm going to be in a location for more than a day I take my laptop with me. The problem I'm having is that file explorer and image viewing is very slow on battery.

Browsing through folders is slow, then it takes seconds for the contents to load, and even longer for the images to load if I have it set to 'large icons' for previews - even if the folder only contains a handful of images. Nothing worse than waiting for that green progress bar to very slowly reach the end, sometimes it takes minutes. Also, it seems to get worse the longer i continue to use it. In the end you can even see the drawing of explorer and dialog boxes as they appear.

Viewing the images is also agonisingly slow as 'Photos' - like many other image viewing apps - annoying load the next 10 or 20 images in a small preview even though you can simply press left or right to view the next images (I've never understood why apps have thumbnail previews like this) .. it all becomes almost unusable.

Funny thing is that once I get home and plug it in it becomes a completely different laptop, everything is virtually instant. I understand that laptops switch power profiles on battery and so on, but you must be able to manually change something in the power options to speed it all up on battery, or at least just the browsing aspect. I've had a look in the power options and they seem pitifully bare.

I don't always have the means to simply plug it in if I'm sleeping in my car or a tent, and a problem with having it plugged in is that I get high CPU when viewing images from 'Shell Infrastructure Host'. Apparently this is one of those "known" issues that must take ages to roll a fix out for, I have to End Task where it then completely resets my environment otherwise I get constant fans blasting.

Some specs:

Windows 11 Pro 22H2 (22621.819)

i7 9750H
16GB DDR4
GTX 1650 (+UHD 630)
1TB M.2 SSD + 1TB SATA SSD

 

[Xploit Machine]

the built-in Photos app is a bit frustration, try using 3rd party image viewing apps eg. ACDSee, Faststone, GIMP etc.

 

[davehc]

Sounds more like an internet connection problem/Onedrive.

 

[aHumanError]

the built-in Photos app is a bit frustration, try using 3rd party image viewing apps eg. ACDSee, Faststone, GIMP etc.

I think I used Fastone at one point but it seems just as slow, and it too loads thumbnails you can't seem to disable.

Sounds more like an internet connection problem/Onedrive.

I don't use OneDrive, it's just basic browsing on local drives. I tend to copy all my pictures from the memory card to free up space, go through and organise them.

 

[Xploit Machine]

I think I used Fastone at one point but it seems just as slow, and it too loads thumbnails you can't seem to disable.


I don't use OneDrive, it's just basic browsing on local drives. I tend to copy all my pictures from the memory card to free up space, go through and organise them.

go thru this and I'll be back (look carefully and compare) .. Its my personal video and review ..

 

[worm6666]

perhaps You could try to look-at / change this in the power plan, which is used for "on battery" behavior... ?

but be aware of that, also when You create only one power profile, that windows 11 "recreates" some profiles later on his own and uses them...

I create always only one profile, and delete all other by cmd - in My case now (after checking that windows has recreated one again):
1./ call cmd with admin rights Win+R -> type "cmd" -> Ctrl+Shif+Enter
2./ list power profiles with "powercfg /L"
3./ select unwanted profile GUID - in My case "381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e"
4./ delete it by command "powercfg /D 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e"
5./ list again if U want to check... "powercfg /L" or delete other ones when not used...