Windows 7 Explorer slow/freezing over VPN

Question

From my Windows 7 64bit workstation at my workplace I administer over a VPN connection tens of servers located at our data center.

Usually I work with Terminal Services but sometimes I will access remote files directly with my local Windows Explorer.

For example when I point my local Windows Explorer to a remote folder containing some 2500 xml files ranging in size from several Kb to over 100Mb, then it will list the contents but at every file change it shows a green progress bar behind the location bar which takes ages too complete, and the status bar says "Searching for items". This will often freeze the Explorer Interface. I think I've tried all the common suggested tweaks in Organize > Folder and Search Options > View.

What is Explorer doing and how can I tell it not to do it?

I had no such issues with my previous XP.

Answer 1

The thing with the Windows Explorer search is that it wants to index everything, both filenames and contents. This is a setting, you can disable it. I suspect that when a file is changed, even just the name, the entire thing is processed again.

I think that the Everything searchtool can do what you want to accomplish. But I'm not sure, since I've needed never used it in that way.

Answer 2

You can see if you are running the desktop service "Windows Search (4.0)" It's usually an update, though I think with Windows 7 it comes preinstalled

Turning this off OR listing these remote directories as "don't index" may help