Attempting to diagnose explorer.exe delays when accessing media files

In reply to Junkey Monkey

1) the corrupted AMD file might have happened the last time I tried to update the video drivers & AMD Catalyst software - there was a power interruption before the update completed, and the PC wasnt powered down - So, after the power came back on a few hours later, I had to start the PC up a 2nd time to do the updates.

2) As for the HDD dying - I hope not ?

I ran HDD Regenerater less than 3 months ago & it didnt report any bad sectors... but I can always run it again http://www.dposoft.net/

HellFire

The RAM usage is less than 30% & the CPU usage is less than 40%

and my browser WaterFox (the 64 bit version of FireFox) usually is the program or service that is using most of both.

How would I know if something is leaking resource ?

The thing I find odd is that Im not having the same problem when accessing files that arent media files...

Im running HDD Regenerator at the moment - then I will run chkdsk after that

I hope its not the HDD (sigh)

I have Comodo Internet Security suite as my antivirus & Firewall; and the antispyware software that I use is Malwarebytes, Spyware Blaster, and Spybot S&D - I update them at least every 2 weeks & run a scan about once a month... and thus far nothing has been flagged as an infection.

All the security software on my PCs are the freeware versions... so, to my knowledge, other than Spybot SD Resident - they arent in an active protection mode - Instead, I use Malwarebytes, and Spybot S&D as spyware scanning & removal tools that I manually run about once a month.

And, to my knowledge, spyware blaster just blocks my browser from accessing known infected websites, or possibly stops known infections from being able to access the internet by re-setting their web addresses in my hosts file to "0.0.0.0" - so they cant "dial out" to access the internet.

So, unless I dont understand how those software programs operate - I dont see how they could be in conflict with each other as I only manually run ONE antispyware scanner/removal tool at a time - and Im not aware of any conflicts between Comodo Internet Security (combined firewall & antivirus - freeware edition) and the Spybot SD Resident of the original "old school" version of Spybot S&D.

The freeware tools I use are the ones that my son recommended I try using due to ease of use & reliability for a non-college educated user... and I have been using this combination of freeware security software programs, on all of the PCs in my household for years.

I am a low-income person living on an SSI income - and I do "tune-ups" for the other low-income people in my neighborhood, and try to show them how to use these freeware tools to keep their PCs & Laptops working as best as is possible once I have used this combination of freeware malware tools to remove the malware from their PCs - given that most low income people really cant afford to buy the FULL versions of many anti-malware tools.

I am a firm believe in the masses having access to technology to help minimize the growing technological "gap" between the "Haves" and the "Have Nots"... So, by using & teaching others to use freeware security and/or anti-malware software - I try to help close that gap for the low income people in my life, and in my community.

If I am mistaken about the reliability of using this combination of freeware security software - please let me know - not only so I dont create problems for myself - but so I dont do so for the other low income people who's PCs I do "tune ups" on, and whom I show how to use these freeware tools on their PCs.

Hellfire13 - I just finished running HDD Regenerator -it repoerted that there were no bed sectors reported on my C drive

then I ran cmd.exe as an administrator and entered "chkdsk /r/f" and then rebooted the PC to let chechdisk run during the boot-up

Then a ran defraggler - it only reported 7.4% of my files were fragmented - but to be safe I ran defraggler in Boot Mode on my C drive - and rebooted the PC.

I dont see "user experience" listed - let alone a value for it when I right click MY Computer and select properties.

I was able to create an .nfo file with my system settings - but that list when displayed as a text file is HUGE - is that what you need ? and if so what do you need out of it ? here is some of it

"System Summary"
OS Name [Microsoft Windows 8.1]
Version [6.3.9600 Build 9600]
Other OS Description [Not Available]
OS Manufacturer [Microsoft Corporation]
System Type [x64-based PC]
CPU [AMD A10-5800K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics, 3800 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)]
BIOS Version/Date [American Megatrends Inc. 5104, 9/14/2012]
SMBIOS Version] [2.7]
Embedded Controller Version [255.255]
BIOS Mode [Legacy]
BaseBoard Manufacturer [ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.]
BaseBoard Model [Available]
Platform Role [Desktop]
Secure Boot State [Unsupported]
PCR7 Configuration [Not Available]
Secure Boot State [Unsupported]
PCR7 Configuration [Not Available]
Windows Directory [C:\WINDOWS]
System Directory [C:\WINDOWS\system32]
Boot Device [\Device\HarddiskVolume1]
Hardware Abstraction Layer [Version = "6.3.9600.17196"]
User Name *************
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) [16.0 GB]
Total Physical Memory [15.4 GB]
Available Physical Memory 12.3 GB
Total Virtual Memory [16.4 GB]
Available Virtual Memory [12.8 GB]
Page File Space [1.00 GB]
Page File [C:\pagefile.sys]
Hyper-V - VM Monitor Mode Extensions [Yes]
Hyper-V - Second Level Address Translation Extensions [Yes]
Hyper-V - Virtualization Enabled in Firmware [Yes]
Hyper-V - Data Execution Protection [Yes]

The only thing odd I see is that after I load HDD Regenerator in Windows is that it is now giving me an error message that states that ALL of my PC's 3.5in 2TB & 4TB SATA HDDs are givng me a SMART error of "0x02" - but it's not giving me a value - and wikipedia says that error "0x02" = throughput performance, and that the higher the number - the better - but without a value assigned to the error message - how am I supposed to assess the vulnerability of my PCs HDDs - if one exists ?

I really cant afford to shell out for 6 new HDDs if I dont need to do so yet - and since I dont have any bad sectors yet - do I really need to start replacing HDDs yet ?

I set windows update to notify me of an update - but to let me decide when & if I want to install it - becuse some earlier windows updates were crappy and caused more problems than they solved - so, I wait for at least a month after a new update posts to see if there are any complaints about the new update before I install it.

I dont have hard-disk-sentinel - but I did find another freeware tool called Disc-Checkup - which I installed & ran an extensive scan on my C drive - which took 2-4 hours per drive... here are the results of the scan of my C drive:

*** DiskCheckup V3.4 Build: 1003 Report ***

SysInfo DLL Version: SysInfo v1.0 Build: 1122
Time of export: 04:31:47 19-Mar-2017

Device information:
Device ID: 0
Interface: SATA
Device Capacity: 1430796 MB
Serial Number: 9VS1P305
Model Number: ST31500341AS
Firmware Revision: CC1H
Partitions:
C: 1187355 MB

ATA information:

Disk geometry:
Cylinders: 182401
Tracks/Cylinder: 255
Sectors/Track: 63
Bytes/Sector: 512
Total disk sectors: 2930277168
Logical sector size: 512
Physical sector size: 512
Media rotation rate: 7200 RPM
Buffer size: N/A
ECC size: 4 Bytes

Standards compliance:
ATA8-ACS Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-7 Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-6 Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-5 Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-4 Supported: Yes
SATA Compliance: Yes
SATA Gen3 Signaling Speed (6.0Gb/s) Supported: No
SATA Gen2 Signaling Speed (3.0Gb/s) supported: Yes
SATA Gen1 Signaling Speed (1.5Gb/s) supported: Yes

Transport Type: Serial

SATA 3.0 Transport Compilance: No
SATA 2.6 Transport Compilance: Yes
SATA 2.5 Transport Compilance: No
SATA II: Ext Transport Compilance: No
SATA 1.0a Transport Compilance: No
ATA8-AST Transport Compilance: No
World Wide ID: 5000C50014A30FA6

Feature support:
SMART supported: Yes
SMART enabled: Yes
SMART self-test supported: Yes
SMART error log supported: Yes
LBA supported: Yes
IORDY supported: Yes
CFast supported: No
DMA supported: Yes
Maximum Multiword DMA mode supported: 2
Multiword DMA selected: None
Maximum UltraDMA mode supported: 6
UltraDMA selected: 6
Maximum PIO mode supported: 4
SATA Compliance: Yes
NCQ priority information supported: No
Unload while NCQ commands are outstanding supported: No
Phy Event Counters supported: Yes
Receipt of power management requests supported: No
NCQ feature set supported: Yes
Software Settings Preservation: Supported, Enabled
In-order data delivery: Not supported
Initiating power management: Supported, Disabled
DMA Setup auto-activation: Not supported
Non-zero buffer offsets: Not supported
Trusted Computing supported: No
Host Protected Area (HPA) supported: Yes
Read look-ahead supported: Yes
Read look-ahead enabled: Yes
Write cache supported: Yes
Write cache enabled: Yes
Power management supported: Yes
Security mode supported: Yes
Security mode enabled: No
Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) supported: Yes
48bit Addressing supported: Yes
Auto Acoustic Managment (AAM) supported: Yes
Auto Acoustic Managment (AAM) enabled: Yes
Recommended AAM level: Maximum performance
Current AAM level: Vendor specific
Power-up in Standby (PUIS) supported: No
Advanced Power Management (APM) supported: No
CompactFlash Association (CFA) supported: No
General Purpose Logging (GPL) supported: Yes
Streaming supported: No
Media card pass through supported: No
Extended power conditions supported: No
Extended status reporting supported: No
Write-read-verify supported: Yes
Write-read-verify enabled: No
Free-fall control supported: No
TRIM command supported: No
SCT command transport supported: Yes
NV Cache enabled: No
NV Cache Power Management supported: No

SMART ATTRIBUTES:
ID Description Status Value Worst Threshold Raw Value TEC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Raw Read Error Rate OK 117 99 6 124408294 N/A
3 Spin Up Time OK 100 96 0 0 N/A
4 Start/Stop Count OK 99 99 20 1789 N/A
5 Reallocated Sector Count OK 100 100 36 21 N/A
7 Seek Error Rate OK 87 60 30 632289004 N/A
9 Power On Time OK 57 57 0 37884 N/A
10 Spin Retry Count OK 100 100 97 2 N/A
12 Power Cycle Count OK 99 37 20 1785 N/A
184 End-to-End error OK 100 100 99 0 N/A
187 Reported Uncorrectable Errors OK 100 100 0 0 N/A
188 Command Timeout OK 100 97 0 12885098639 N/A
189 High Fly Writes OK 1 1 0 711 N/A
190 Temperature Difference from 100 OK 52 44 45 35166421040 N/A
194 Temperature OK 48 56 0 48 C N/A
195 Hardware ECC Recovered OK 39 24 0 124408294 N/A
197 Current Pending Sector Count OK 100 100 0 0 N/A
198 Uncorrectable Sector Count OK 100 100 0 0 N/A
199 UltraDMA CRC Error Count OK 200 200 0 7 N/A
240 Head flying hours OK 100 253 0 142940806616046 N/A
241 Total LBAs Written OK 100 253 0 3621547153 N/A
242 Total LBAs Read OK 100 253 0 1281731930 N/A

For now, the symptom has stopped... but I am as clueless as to WHY the symptom started - let alone why it stopped... So, I have no clue if the symptom will return or not.

In the interim - I greatly reduced the number of files in that folder; and Ive applied a few of the recent windows updates; and I have updated my browsers, and theirs plug-ins; and I have updated both my codecs and my media players (MPC & VLC).