I don't think there are any more ideas. All the ones we had for Opus would be a superset of those which would apply to Explorer as well.
I'd look for similarities between the two machines affected. If they both have some software or a driver in common, try uninstalling them to see if it makes a difference, and use things for a while to make sure it doesn't just seem to have gone away, since it appears to be intermittent at times.
Several definitive statements in this thread have turned out to be incorrect after using things for a bit longer, so it may be that they also show problems, just in different situations or only after using them more extensively. Either way, it's probably not relevant. There is some interaction between software or drivers, or possibly a hardware or configuration problem on the machine, and it's affecting both Opus and Explorer at least. Knowing what it doesn't affect probably won't help to solve it.
Since the issue affects Explorer, a general Windows help forum may have ideas which we haven't thought of. If I think of anything else, I'll add it here as well, but having thought about it on & off over the holiday, I can't think of anything new to suggest.
Leo - Dopus slowed down to a point where it was unusable. I didn't want to have to do without it, so I set aside some time and went through the process of a selective startup. It appears that Windows Search is the culprit - at least on the desktop system. I haven't had a chance to get to my laptop yet.
I will post an update as soon as I've had a chance to disable Windows Search on the laptop and "live with" both systems for a few days to insure that is indeed the cure.
Any idea what was triggering Windows Search to do things?
Are there stored queries under File Collections / Stored Queries? (coll://Stored Queries) Maybe they were being refreshed and the queries were such that they caused a lot of disk or CPU use.
It could also be a bug in the indexing service, or one of the plugins (which can involve 3rd party components for indexing different file types). Certain XML files used to cause it to go into an endless loop until Microsoft patched it.
Actually Windows Search wasn't "doing" anything. One of the first things I do on any new system is disable indexing (both drive by drive in "properties" and in Control Panel). I had the indexing service set to Manual on one system and Auto (Delayed Start) - which is the default - on the other and it appeared that it was stuck on "loading" without actually starting - so yes - it may be a bug in the service. And again, there was no high cpu or disc usage that I could identify.
Anyway, thought I'd post the results so you could have it on file in the event that anyone else runs into a similar situation. At the very least, disabling the service is a valid troubleshooting step. As soon as I clicked on DISABLE and made certain the service was stopped on the laptop, Dopus began working normally. Didn't even require a reboot.
Be well and best wishes for a great 2016 and beyond!!
BTW, I was just going to send you a PM, but apparently my account is not authorized to do so (or edit my own posts). What I was going to say in the PM is that if I can ever return the favor (of the time and effort you provided me) I'll be happy to do so. I've been involved with computing since the early 1980's and as I mentioned earlier I'm on staff at several Windows support forums. Over the years I've been a beta tester for many developers (including the old Netscape - which famously claimed it didn't use beta testers - but it did ).
You have my email address - feel free to reach out at any time. And please feel free to delete this particular post after you read it. Thanks again leo.
Thanks for the extra info, it could certainly come in handy if anyone else runs into a similar issue!
PMs are disabled for everyone and editing is disabled in Help & Support for almost everyone because (as the FAQ goes into in more detail) whenever it is enabled, people create very confusing threads.
