Very slow loading of directories (Opus 10)

Hi, long time (13+ years) user here. I'm currently using Directory Opus 10.5.7 x64 on Win10/Win11 machine with PCI-e 3.0 NVMe drive - system I've been using for the past 3 years.

DO has been working flawlessly until some 3 months ago when, for no apparent reason, it started to occasionally load directories very very slow. Sometimes it can take almost up to one minute to load a directory, no matter how many files or sub-directories it contains. Many times I had to resort to using Windows Explorer to open a directory, do everything I had to do with it, all that while the DO was still loading that same directory.

This behavior is not constant - it would work fine for few minutes, load everything instantly, only to start loading slow for next few minutes and sometimes even become completely unresponsive (greyed-out Not Responding window), and then it would get back to normal again. There seems to be no pattern in timing or for which directory this would happen.

I can't tie beginning of this issue to any event, other than maybe some regular Windows updates. Issue started while the system was running Win10, and it is still present after Win11 upgrade I made in the meantime. My DO settings haven't been changed since I initially set those years ago. I use Details View mode for all directories (no thumbnails).

Has anyone else had this problem and how did you solve it? Thanks!

Opus 10.5.7 is 8 years old, so something else on the system must have changed for things to slow down recently.

It's probably a shell extension some other software has installed.

The Crash, exit or high CPU when viewing certain directories FAQ has suggestions on things to look for.

We could look at process snapshots if you were seeing this with a current version, but we don't keep symbols for versions more than a few years old (they use up a lot of space), so it wouldn't be possible with Opus 10.

Thank you for your answer. I'll go over suggested FAQ - hopefully I'll find solution to my problem.