Folder Tree expansion slow w/ Microsoft Security Essentials

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I found a permanent solution (in my case at least) and I posted it on this link:

Just in case, I copy what I wrote there, here:

I've been having the same problem for a few years now and I have tried EVERYTHING and nothing worked... EVERY suggestion in this forum and other forums didn't work... I searched high and low... disabled everything using shexview, used so many other tools... uninstalled all antivirus and firewalls, etc... I had two computers with the same problem, one with Windows 7 and the other with Windows 10.

The curious thing was that only Directory Opus seemed to be affected. Windows Explorer, Total Commander, and Speed Commander (yes, I have a few other file manager that I collected over the years, up until I found Directory Opus) were totally unaffected... go figure.

Anyhow, no matter what, Directory Opus always displayed/populated the directory tree way way too slow... I even went back and installed version 9 from back in the days that I remember it worked lightning fast... nope, didn't work. Then, if the problem persisted even when installing the older version which I remember was almost instantaneous at showing the folder tree, then the problem had to be with the OS... so, just by good karma (and an ounce of mischief), I uninstalled a program I no longer needed (Impulse Icons Manager) and it left me with all my desktop (and everywhere else) icons as white pages... there are other programs that produce the same problem when uninstalling, but this one was very connected to the icons. Anyhow, the icon Registry Key handler in Windows was left damage and when applying the fix below, it also fixed the Directory Opus problem (by the way, in another computer where I didn't have Impulse, Directory Opus still had the same problem and after applying this fix it also went back to normal, to populating the directory tree instantaneously - therefore, at least in my case, the problem was the Icon Handler registry key).

This is what fixed it for me:

  1. Open REGEDIT and go to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex

  1. Inside that folder "Shellex" (it's actually a key, but it looks like a yellow container folder), delete the whole folder or container called "IconHandler". This will also delete everything inside that container.

  2. Reboot the computer. Voila! Done. DirectoryOpus love at first sight all over again!!!

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