XP (in Boot Camp) long lag deleting a file

Question

I've got a pretty beefy Mac Pro on my desk, and I've used it in Boot Camp mode (with Windows XP) for most of its life.

Every time I delete a file, Explorer hangs for about a minute. Doesn't matter if it's a small file or a big file (mostly I notice when I'm deleting a wayward shortcut on the desktop) but deletes always take way longer than it makes sense for them to.

What does that indicate? Boot Camp partition issues? Anti-virus software making absolutely sure that the file is properly deleted? TortoiseSVN checking that the deleted files weren't part of some repository? Windows Indexer being overzealous?

Any ideas would be appreciated. (And they'll be easy to test.)

Answer 1

Empty the trash.

When the trash is full and you delete a new file, Windows needs to index the entire can to figure out what to delete.

Alternatively, you can hold down [Shift] when you delete a file to skip the trash can and delete it permanently.