A few days ago I encountered a strange problem that since then consistently persists, I noticed that Windows 7 all of a sudden became exceptionally slow at opening video files. I haven't got the slightest clue how this could have begun or what may have caused it. I use media player classic with k-lite codecs, the problem is not as noticable if I use windows media player. VLC seems noticably slower than windows media player but noticably faster than media player classic. But in either case, all these players should be opening files in a timespan of 3 seconds normally, only windows media player is doing it anywhere near that fast.
Also shortly after I noticed that Windows Photo Viewer also got this sort of a slowdown, usually taking around 10 seconds to open any image file (would usually be around 3-4).
I've had just about enough of this, and I don't particularly feel like going for the cure-all for all windows problems and reinstalling (this is a relatively fresh, and still quite clean install)
Anybody have any ideas for what could be causing this?
(Just to deal with this one straight off the bat: It's not hard drive problems, I get the exact same problems when I am opening these files off an SSD as I do from an HDD, or even a network drive… it's something else, this was the first (and only) thing I thought of).
PS: Audio files are opening just fine; haven't noticed games being slow at launching either.
I have an nvidia gtx 670 gpu, on driver version 364.51 (In case that might be relevant; and no way in hell I'm updating these drivers anytime soon). I don't have a calibrated color profile (color management settings are default)
Best Answer
I downgraded my drivers from 364.52 to 362.00 since I already knew that the 364 drivers were known troublemakers, even destroying peoples cards at 364.72... (regression or deliberate...) it's not surprising that earlier 364 versions would also have had problems.
In other words, I'm fairly certain this was a driver bug. I'm testing now with 364.51
Update: Not seeing this problem on 364.51 but I am seeing some slowdowns in other areas, I think I'll stick with 362 for now.