Directory Opus freezing

I have been using Directory Opus for quite a number of years now, starting with the original version on the Amiga platform. It has been working excellently until I upgraded my PC to run Windows 8.1 64 bit. DirOpus continually freezes. I'm running the latest version (10.5.4.0 64 bit). I run it set as a dual vertical window to easily copy/move files between directories/drives. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't show anything when run and when it does work and I drill down through the directories it will also freeze at some level. I have tried uninstalling, rebooting, running a registry cleaner (Corel WinZip Utilities Suite), rebooting, re-installing and rebooting yet again, but the problem persists. I have not experienced this behaviour with Windows XP (32 bit) or Windows 7 (64 bit) so I assume that there is some compatibility issue with Windows 8.1. Does anyone have any suggestions that may resolve this issue?

Windows 8.1 has some driver issues on some hardware, particularly with USB 3.0 devices, so if you're using those that may be the issue.

Otherwise, the problem is probably caused by a 3rd party shell extension going wrong inside of Opus.

The Crash, exit or high CPU usage when viewing certain directories guide is a good place to start for tracking down the issue, and the Other Troubleshooting parts of the FAQs may contain other useful guides, depending on what you find or if you are seeing other problems.

My vote go to a Windows 8.1-problem.
Sometimes I get DOpus (Not Responding) and I have to kill it, this started after upgrading to Win8.1. It was NEVER a problem on Windows 8.
Btw, I have three USB3-disks connected to the system.

The system sometimes also freeze up for a number of seconds, or never returns and I have to switch of the power.
This happens (it seems) with moderate to high load on the disks connected.

Seriously considering a roll back to Win8.

Cheers
Opie

Look around and you will find tales of woe in the 8.0 to 8.1 switch that seem to be more severe than the move from 7.0 to 8.0.

Puzzling, but it does point the finger at Microsoft rather than the many software and hardware vendors who get accused of crimes against computing.

It may be that the rest of the industry did not expect Microsoft to make severe changes in 8.1.

It is no consolation, of course, but Apple seems to have done the same thing in its latest iOS update.

It would appear that I have resolved this issue. Searching the internet also revealed users having an issue with Windows Explorer; it would be very slow at times with the green bar at the top of the window taking ages to complete whatever it was doing! One site I came across (I forget which) suggested modifying the registry which seemed quite straight forward and as I have directly altered registry entries before, I felt comfortable in giving it a try. The steps I took are: -

  1. Run Command Prompt as Administrator (click on Windows System, right click on Command Prompt and select Run as adminsitrator)
  2. In the resultant window type regedit and press Return.
  3. Locate the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\FileChangeClientConfigs and rename it HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search\FileChangeClientConfigsBAK or something similar so that if it doesn't work you can revert to it later. (I suggest that you also backup the registry before editing it, just to be sure.)
  4. Close all open windows and reboot.

Windows will re-create this key when it starts up again.
So far, I haven't had any further issues with DirOpus or Windows Explorer. Going back into regedit and comparing the old and new entries, the only difference I could discern was that there was no ScopeToMonitor entry under {C1DE235C-9FE6-4FB3-8DB3-69D7975EB416}. The new value was of type REG_SZ and pointed to C:\Users\Richard\Pictures\Camer Roll

Hope this may be of assistance to others.