Delay Opening Folders caused by IE Resident

[magicalbum]

stupid me didn't bother to search this forum before i googled

solution here: http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=32763

[NotCody]

UPDATE: I was mistaken - upgrading to IE7 has not fixed my issue. The test on another PC was obviously a red herring - on my main two computers the upgrade has not affected on the 3 second delay.
(...)
Please read my previous posts above for full details of the problem - IE7 has now been eliminated as a fix. Any suggestions?

I came across an odd delay/lag shortly after I updated to the latest version of SpyBot and had initially wondered if the automatic clearing of temporary files (which the new version of SpyBot seems to do when it first launches) had anything to do with it. This Windows Explorer delay was also quite annoying for me (also someone who still prefers and uses IE6!).

Maybe you could try some investigating (as I did) and create a new local account on your computer and then log in to it. When I did this, I noticed that there was no delay found in Windows Explorer in this new account. I called this account "dummy" (for testing on a "dummy" profile) and tried copying my usual account profile over the dummy account profile. When I did so, the odd lag appeared in the now copied-over profile. (I learned long ago that testing is best done on a copy of something, so if I really screw up it's only a copy that gets affected and I still have the original to copy again.)

I then decided to delete the "dummy" account and its now "corrupted" profile and then recreate it. Just as I suspected, the recreated "dummy" account did not have the Windows Explorer delay. I therefore began copying over my usual profile's folders to the "dummy" profile, one at a time. The next paragraph is an excerpt from a note I sent another colleague once I had identified and solved this issue (drumroll, please):

"I isolated the issue to the "Cookies" folder (of all places) and took MD5 hashes of all the items in that folder. Next I used the general tab in Internet Explorer's "Tools, Internet Options" and cleared the cookies with the "Delete Cookies..." button, whereupon the odd lag completely disappeared in Windows Explorer! The only thing that changed in the "Documents and Settings, dummy, Cookies" folder was the "index.dat" file -- all the other "...@....txt" files were still there. (The MD5 hashes confirmed this.) Can you think of any reason why a (corrupted?) index.dat file located in the Cookies folder would cause a short delay in Windows Explorer when nothing other than Windows Explorer is even running?"

So -- short answer -- try clearing your cookies!

P.S.: I still don't know if SpyBot had anything to do with the onset of the problem I described above.

[DougCuk]

Congratulations on coming to the same solution I found - but by a different route.

I had given up on this thread some time ago as users had started several other threads on this topic.
This problem appears to be linked directly to the SDHelper Resident IE module in Spybot v1.6 - which obviously has some problems that were not present in v1.5.2.

I did start a summary "Solved" thread with a more obvious title Delay Opening Folders Caused by SDHelper - Solved!! - which also links to the other major threads on this and related problems - but you must have missed that one.