Every user actively working in the Windows 10 operating system knows that absolutely all files downloaded from the Internet are dumped by default in a separate folder called "Downloads". There is a shortcut to it in the Start menu, on the desktop, as well as in the navigation menu of the explorer (file manager), and many get used to entering this directory in this way. And in the end, when the shortcuts disappear as a result of a crash or a virus, users become confused, not knowing where the Downloads folder is located in Windows 10 and not having access to the downloaded files. What to do? If you also encountered such a situation, be aware that you can find your files along this path:

C:\Users\<имя_пользователя>\Downloads

If the operating system is installed on another logical drive, then the drive letter will be respectively not C:\, but the one that is used by you. I'm running as the "Administrator" user and my path to the "Downloads" folder looks like this:

Sometimes you may encounter the fact that this directory does not open in this way either. This usually means that a virus has taken over Windows 10 and changed file attributes. To return everything as it was, you need to click on the "Start" button and select "Command Prompt (Administrator)" in the menu that appears. In the command console window, enter the command:

Attrib -s -h C:\users\<имя_пользователя>\downloads

Press the "Enter" key and wait for the command to be executed. After that, access to the Downloads folder will be restored.

P.S.: Be sure to check your computer for viruses, otherwise you risk again that it will work and you will again look for where to find the Downloads folder in Windows 10 on a computer or laptop.

As a rule, all files downloaded from the Internet: programs, music, movies, torrents, ISO images, and so on, are saved in the Downloads folder, which in Windows is located by default on the system drive (C:). Over time, the size of this folder can reach quite impressive sizes - from several to tens of gigabytes, and become one of the reasons for the catastrophic lack of free space on drive C or even lead to its overflow. Therefore, it would be highly advisable to change the location of the Downloads folder, choosing for its location not the system, but another local drive, for example (D:).

How to move the Downloads folder to another drive

There are at least several ways to do this.

First (change the location in the folder properties):

• Open "This PC" in Windows 10 Explorer (... or C → Users → Folder with your username → Downloads) → right-click on the "Downloads" folder → select "Properties";
  
  
• Location → change the default path manually, or use the "Move" button to specify the path to the desired folder on another local drive → Apply;
  
• "Do you want to move all files from the old location to the new one?" → Yes → OK.
  
  

Second way (easier)

The third way (through the registry editor):

As a result, regardless of the method chosen, all previously downloaded files will be transferred to a new location, freeing up space on the C drive, and new downloads will no longer be saved on the system drive, but in the folder that you specified.

In addition, you can similarly change the location of other user folders by moving them from the drive (C:) to another drive (volume): music, videos, pictures, documents, desktop, and others.

Surely you may have noticed that some folders in Explorer (or in another program that shows the contents of disks) open for a very long time. You start Explorer like this, select the desired disk, double-click on the folder, and it is empty. And only after a few seconds the first files and folders begin to appear, but even then not all at once. Sometimes it takes up to 10-15 seconds. This is especially true for folders that are frequently used (for example, the Downloads folder). How to get rid of this tedious waiting once and for all?

Why does Explorer take a long time to open folders?

To understand why this is happening, let's take a look under the hood of the operating system and see how it shows the contents of folders in Explorer.

After double-clicking on a folder, you do not immediately get access to it. First of all, an antivirus is included in the work, which checks all contents for viruses. If an infected file is detected during the scan, it is automatically quarantined and you see a corresponding notification.

Then the Explorer itself is included in the work, which begins to read the data of the checked files and display them on the screen. If the folder contains large files (photos or videos), Explorer also creates/updates thumbnails for them so that you can see the contents of the files right in the list without opening them in the appropriate program.

The presence of a huge number of small files in folders increases the waiting time especially. In this case, the antivirus and Explorer can take a very long time to analyze the data.

And only after all this, Explorer gives you permission to start working with the data in the folder.

How to deal with it?

There are three fairly simple steps to fix this problem.

1. Add folders to antivirus exclusions

Thus, the antivirus will simply ignore the contents of such folders.

However, there are a few critical things to understand about some folders.

"Downloads". Checking this folder with an antivirus is simply vital. It is a kind of "quarantine zone" through which files get from the network to the computer. Accordingly, there may be dangerous objects that can harm your data. For example, along with the program downloaded from the warez, a Trojan will get onto the computer.

You do not need to add the "Downloads" folder to the antivirus exceptions.

"Photo"/"Music"/"Video". Collections that are already many years old and which are replenished with new data quite rarely (and when downloading files still end up in the "Downloads" and are checked) can be excluded from the antivirus scan. This will speed up the opening of the folder.

Virtual machines. If you work with virtual machines, then it will not be superfluous to add folders with virtual machine images to the antivirus exclusions. This will speed up the work with them, since these files are incredibly huge and take a particularly long time to check them.

2. Disable thumbnails in Explorer for folders with a lot of data

To do this, simply switch in File Explorer under "View" to "List" or "Table" mode.

This will disable thumbnails and files/folders will appear in File Explorer without additional delay.

3. Divide large folders into several small ones

By dividing large folders into several smaller ones, you can also speed up the display of folder contents in Explorer. Of course, this will not give a huge acceleration, but it will still allow to speed up the display process to some extent. The less data for analysis, the faster the anti-virus will check them, and the Explorer will display them.

For example, you can move unused files/folders to the "Archive" subfolder, and leave only the data for the current work in the main folder. In addition to speeding up, it also simplifies the work with documents.

With active use of the Internet, dozens, or even hundreds, of files can accumulate in the “Downloads” folder on your computer per day. Downloaded songs, photos from friends' albums, pictures, videos and much more - all this is saved by the browser to the "Downloads" folder by default. Most often, these are temporary files that are needed every minute, and then they simply litter the place. Windows 10 has a built-in utility that can solve the problem of cluttering up the Downloads folder.

How automatic deletion of files from the Downloads folder works

Below we will consider the work of the utility, which automatically cleans the “Downloads” folder after a specified period of time when files are stored in it.

For example, you downloaded photos from a friends album on a social network to send them via messenger to relatives. These photos are sent to the Downloads folder by default. From there, you sent them to the desired messenger, and they remained in the “Downloads” folder, taking up space on your hard drive, although in fact they are no longer needed. With the option discussed in this article, such photos will be automatically deleted by the operating system after a specified period of storage.

This option is recommended to be enabled for those users who do not like to manually clear the “Downloads” folder, but do not store anything important in it. Please note that if important information is stored in the Downloads folder, it is better to move it to another folder if you choose to enable this option.

How to set up automatic cleaning of unused files from the Downloads folder

To set up automatic deletion of files from the Downloads folder in Windows 10, you can use the standard utility. For this:

How to set up automatic cleaning of any folder in Windows

There is a more sophisticated way to optimize hard drive performance by configuring a specific folder (or multiple folders) to be cleared at a scheduled time. That is, if you have a folder on your computer in which unnecessary trash is always stored, you can create a command that will delete it at a certain point in time, without notifying the user.

To implement the automatic folder cleaning feature in Windows, you will need to write a small script and use the task scheduler to make it work at a certain time. This is done as follows:

1. First you need to create a script. To do this, launch the standard Notepad application and enter the following code into it: forfiles /p "C:\test" /s /m *.* /c "cmd /c Del @path" /d -1

   Note: c:\test in this code is an example of a path to a folder that needs to be cleared regularly, and -1 - this is information that you need to delete files that are older than 1 day. Change these parameters, in accordance with your requirements for the functionality of the script.
   

2. Next, save the generated script. To do this, click in the notepad "File" - "Save As". Choose a save location and write the name of the created script, be sure to include the .bat extension in the name;
   
3. The script has been created. You can check its operation by double-clicking on the saved .bat file with the left mouse button. If the files with the specified parameters have been deleted from the folder specified in the script, you can proceed to the next step - automating the execution of the script when certain conditions are met.
4. Launch the “Task Scheduler” application using the search (or other means);
   
5. The standard Windows 10 utility will open. Click in the top menu “Action” - “Create a simple task”;
   
6. Next, you need to enter the name of the task to be created, it can be anything. After setting the name, click "Next";
   
7. The next step is to set a trigger for script execution. Choose the trigger you need. Let's take the weekly folder cleanup as an example. After selecting the desired item, click "Next";
   
8. Depending on the selected trigger, configure it as needed and click “Next”;
   
9. The next step is to select the action that will be executed when the given trigger occurs. In this case, you need to select the item “Run the program” and click “Next”;
   
10. In the “Program or script” item, add the address to the created .bat file and click “Next”;
    
11. Check that all options are correct and click “Finish” to save the result.
    

After that, at the specified time, Windows will execute the created command. Please note that the created .bat file cannot be deleted and moved so that the system can access it every time the script is executed.

Windows 10 has quite a few interesting features and quite a few problems that disturb users. Therefore, these problems need to be somehow solved, whatever they may be.

This article will talk about why folders take a long time to load in Windows 10. Most likely, not that I encountered such a problem when you open a folder and a long download starts at the top. At the same time, no matter how powerful your computer is, cases were observed on sufficiently productive devices. Let's try to solve this problem.

Why do folders take a long time to load?

I want to say that this problem is observed not only in Windows 10, but in earlier versions of the OS. Through observation and analysis, it turned out that the problem occurs due to a feature that has been built into the system since the days of Windows Vista. This explorer feature allows you to tell the system the types of files stored in this folder and subfolders. Thus, the system will be aware of the files, and in which case, it will optimize them for the user to run.

For some folders, the optimization of the system is carried out in an asthmatic mode, it does not matter if you asked it to do so or not. For example, for the folders Downloads, Videos, Documents, etc. In addition, Windows has the Automatic Folder Type Discovery function, which just analyzes files, and then, based on these analyzes, optimization is carried out. The feature is enabled by default.

As you already understood, the function, or rather its algorithm, is not entirely perfect, therefore, such brakes occur when loading folders. It is not always possible to determine the type of files in a folder.

For example, in some folder there are images or photos, and the system understood this. In this case, when opening a folder with photos or pictures, we will observe the loading of thumbnails for each photo and picture. This will be going on for a long time. And imagine that there are several thousand files there? I think you understand what will happen.

I would like to note that the Downloads folder for the Automatic Folder Type Discovery utility is a tasty morsel. There can be a varied number of files stored there, therefore, downloading this folder can take several minutes, which is very annoying. And no matter how powerful your computer is, you will either have to be patient or try to solve the problem.

Fortunately, this feature can be disabled, which we will do now.

Disable or change folder optimization

First, you need to determine which folders are loading slowly. Most likely, there may not be many of them in the Automatic Folder Type Discovery utility, just a couple of pieces.

Now you need to go to the properties of this folder, right-click on it and select "Properties".

Now go to the tab "Settings" and there in the drop down menu "Optimize this folder" choose "Common Elements".

Just below, check the box next to "Apply this template to all subfolders". Once done, click Apply and OK.