slow operating / freeze / blue circle hell

[richardk]

X2 collapsed into outrageously slow hell a couple days ago with even the simplest operation in the smallest folder hanging or freezing x2 completely with the spinning blue circle for anywhere from 1 second to five minutes, on pretty much all navigation among folders.
I just spent a couple hours reinstalling and re-reinstalling including downoading a new copy of x2, deleting the settings and license key from before and running x2 without making any changes whatsoever to the settings.

I've neither installed other new programs nor made any changes to Windows except from running chkdsk and a program for testing USB sticks (it was either Check Flash or USB Flash Drive Tester). Everything had been working fine for years and x2 had been lightning fast. I followed the instructions here https://www.zabkat.com/blog/why-is-xplorer2-slow.htm including...

No slow columns! I only use Name Extension Size Modified 99% of the time! I am very familiar with slowdowns from more difficult columns
No big files or folders! Just as slow on folders with 10 files, 2 Mb each.
Details view - no thumbnails
No filters, no auto folder sizes, no network folders, no virtual drives, no searching was taking place
No antivirus other than Win 8.1's native one
Windows Explorer works fine and fast as ever

Then by a staggering stroke of luck System Restore had a restore point from ten days ago so I restored to that and x2 is fine now so the question is -

What went wrong and how do I stop it from happening again? If the restore point wasn't there would there have been any option other than reinstalling Windows entirely?

[dunno]

There are ways of checking window's file system for integrity without re-installing windows. below is a link to windows commands for checking file systems.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... d86e0ef4ca

[nikos]

as you yourself confirmed, the problem isn't xplorer2 but some system update that foobar'd "something"
what is this something? it could be a million things...

did you try a reboot?

[richardk]

the problem isn't xplorer2 but some system update that foobar'd "something"
what is this something? it could be a million things...

did you try a reboot?

What does reboot mean? Restart? Yes at least once a day and between the trials of deleting and reinstalling X2.

Is it not possible to at least guess how plausible it is that Check Flash, the program I ran, could interfere with X2? I know people always say anything can cause anything in computers but I've never heard of a program just going and breaking a completely unrelated program. The exception is antivirus which you do often hear can break many things. I guess I'm wondering, since Check Flash goes through and looks at all the files and sectors in a USB stick, and as a file manager X2 sort of is in the same ballpark, could that cause a conflict?

What about external hard drives that have been removed? Could something have gotten stuck and X2 was looking for it? I attach them with USB to use them for a few minutes and then remove them. They're not on a network.

[nikos]

it is not easy for me to guess what's going on
I am not aware of checkflash either
if xplorer2 gets stuck again, you can try this procdump tool
www.zabkat.com/blog/procdump-debug-hung-processes.htm

note that the "easy" method mentioned in the above blog won't work for your older version