I recently upgraded to SP2, and this momentarily solved the problem, but it has returned...
 
Whenever I open Windows Explorer, it hangs horribly - I have the window, and the toolbar, but everything else takes about 30 seconds to load - this is opening the main user folder. When I then open another folder from that, Documents, Music, any other folder, it loads the window, and then after around 30 seconds the list of files/directories loads, and after another 20 or so seconds the icons for these load. During this entire process (around a minute) I cannot click anything in the explorer window.
 
I have defragged recently (Every week I do it) an conducted a full system scan for virus', malware and spyware. Nothing. According to my defrag program system performance is 99% and my Windows Experience Index of 3.5 and that's for Aero. the next lowest is 4.5 for 3D...
 
I can't work out what is causing this to be so slow... And it happens as a general thing it would seem, after my fresh reinstall a while ago it started, SP1 remedied it for a time, same as SP2, but it still happened again after a short time. I guess for now I'll try some more virus/malware/spyware searching, and maybe a defrag, and several restarts - see if that will get me anywhere... again...

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Try to disable preview from the Windows Explorer or even better, ditch Vista and get XP/7/Linux.

Well, I don't want to swap to 7 on the basis I won't be buying it, and I want this laptop to be usable next year. I couldn't live on Linux, partly due to the wireless not working, and partly due to my reliance on Photoshop And I don't have a copy of XP, and I'm not fantastically wanting to swap...
 
I'll try disabling that... and in fact a lot of other useless stuff I've just seen in the Folder and Search options.

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