I need to work with very large folders on each side of the file manager so I can use buttons and stuff on them. Loading just one of these folders crashes DOpus. A while ago I copied one of these folders to a different location while I was in the destination folder and after the transfer DOpus was still usable even though I was in the large folder. I don't have enough space to copy the folders anymore so I was wondering if there is a way to slow down the folder loading process? That seems to be the difference here since copying took a long time. I've tried other programs but they all crashed too.
Do you mean they actually crashed, as in an error message from Windows and the programs stopped running? Or just that things took a long time or something else?
If every program you ask to read a folder crashes as a result, there may be something wrong with the drive the folder is on.
It's also possible that a shell extension is crashing when asked for information about some of the files in the folder.
Is any crash dumps were generated, they can often be used to see which component is causing the crash.
Fixing the cause of the crash it what's needed. Slowing things down probably won't help. Speed is usually not the issue.
Here is a good place to start:
It may also be worth checking if you can successfully list the directory from a command prompt, in case the problem is very low level (e.g. failing hardware). Run cmd.exe then type
dir "x:\whatever\the\path\is" and push return. Does that also crash?
The folder loads fine in Windows Explorer but I can't really do the stuff I need to do in that program. The CMD command worked.
As for what I meant by crash, everything freezes including the loading icon but the loading icon would sometimes occasionally move for less than a second. I've waited for hours several times in the past without it getting any better. I have to close it by either right clicking the icon on the taskbar or terminating the process in task manager. I think I misused the word crash. There are never any error messages as far as I can remember. Btw, the folders have between 1.6 and 1.8 million files each. I just tested it and it doesn't say it's not responding in the task manager even if I try interacting with the program. It is using a lot of CPU though.
Sounds like it is just slow and not crashed in that case. That changes things a bit.
That would definitely slow things down, especially if extra work is being done per-file (which depends on which columns are visible in the file display, and what shell extensions are installed on the system).
Making a few manually generated process dumps may let us tell you if something outside of Opus is slowing things down: Automatic crash logs (for bug reports)
But with that many files in one folder, it probably makes more sense to split things up and organise them more so everything isn't all in one place, as that will inevitably make a lot of things slow and difficult to manage.