Question How quickly does Windows (11) File Explorer open on your PC?

mikeymikec

Lifer

May 19, 2011

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• May 6, 2025

• #1

My impression across the many PCs I see in my line of work that it's not particularly fast to open, but also (oddly enough) that a web browser such as Firefox consistently opens quicker than Explorer does.

Looking at my Win10 VM, File Explorer doesn't seem to be particularly snappy in opening there either, but my impression is that Win11 FE is slower than 10's. Comparing Win7 FE's opening time to Win10's, Win7's is noticeably quicker.

 

balloonshark

Diamond Member

Jun 5, 2008

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• May 6, 2025

• #2

It's not instantaneous but it takes slightly less than one second on this PC.

 

WelshBloke

Lifer

Jan 12, 2005

32,565

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• May 6, 2025

• #3

Computer is running a bit sluggish.

I'll open Explorer to see what's hogging the system.

Explorer.exe is at 47% CPU.

😔

 

balloonshark

Diamond Member

Jun 5, 2008

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• May 6, 2025

• #4

Explorer is 2.9% or 310MB. This is an i7-12700K with 32GB of DDR5 ram.

 

C

C1

Platinum Member

Feb 21, 2008

2,385

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• May 7, 2025

• #5

Win 11 ver 23H2 (11th gen i7 CPU - 4 core, 8 thread. 16GB ram, 256 GB SSD)

If I just click the stop watch twice fast as I can, the reading is 0.22 sec.

Attempting to measure the FE open/display time (thru shotcut) result is consistently 0.64 sec, but that includes my own reaction time, so the FE open response time is considered somewhere between 0.22 and 0.64 sec.

The above result is essentially the same when tested on an older Win 10 system using an i5 CPU, 8Gb ram and 500Gb SSD.

Both machines are fully loaded with MS Office, games, video & photo rendering and lots other stuff. Even using WinAero for display control.