Accessing my Downloads folder

[harm_less]

Over the past couple of days if I try to access my downloads folder I just get a "Working on it" message with no progress and the message at top of page Downloads (Not Responding). All other folder I can get into except for Downloads. Any suggestions? I'm running W10, but keep getting bothered by MS about upgrading to W11.

Also just did a MS update but fobbed them off on the final move by choosing the 'decide in 3 days' option.

[nzoomed]

Thats a strange one, if you right click it and select properties and then click on the location tab, does it point to c:/users/USERNAME HERE/downloads?

[king1]

yep strange, another way to try is via this PC -> Drive C: -> users ... etc as above - see if you can access it from there...

I would also take the opportunity to upgrade to windows 11, good chance it will fix that problem and it is pretty nice to use - tabbed explorer windows is a pretty useful feature...
Backup first though, just in case...

[harm_less]

Thats a strange one, if you right click it and select properties and then click on the location tab, does it point to c:/users/USERNAME HERE/downloads?

Right clicking on the Downloads icon then properties gives that labelling. 
Size 124GB, Size on disk 120GB (mainly downloaded videos).

What I'm seeing on Google is to run CHKDSK to confirm HD integrity but as all other folders remain accessible I'm not sure that will help. Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15 7000

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yep strange, another way to try is via this PC -> Drive C: -> users ... etc as above - see if you can access it from there...

I would also take the opportunity to upgrade to windows 11, good chance it will fix that problem and it is pretty nice to use - tabbed explorer windows is a pretty useful feature... 
Backup first though, just in case...

Thanks. That's got me in there. I'm a bit baffled as to why this issue has suddenly surfaced as I'm not aware of having changed anything that would be relevant over the past week or two.

So far as W11 is concerned I'm hesitant to go there as I don't know how well it will work with several software packages I run for the likes of communicating with our Polestar2 EV, Evnex EVSE charging unit, solar monitoring, our own website, accounting and IRD comm's, and file accessing via torrent services. I'm just not keen on it generating a cascade of downstream issues.

I do run backups on an intermittent basis so will do so before taking that leap 

[king1]

Depends on just how/where you are clicking to open the downloads ie from the This PC window, Frequent folders window, a desktop link to the downloads, or somehow else...

believe it or not shortcut links to files/folders can go bad, and it is just a matter of deleting the old shortcut and creating a new one from the original folder (right click [more options] send to desktop)

Windows has a concept called 'Libraries' - Pictures, Music Documents are all 'Libraries' which can contain multiple seperate folder locations, but presented in a unified view. These can have similar issues - by default they are usually a library with a single folder ie your pics, docs, music folder. Not likely your problem as downloads isn't a default library.

You will need to do something fairly soon re windows 11 - eventually Win 10 will be too insecure to do things like online banking, shopping, email etc. No one in their right mind would be using windows 7 for these things nowadays. But you could start by looking up the system requirements for all those apps you use to see if Windows 11 is listed as supported, whether upgrades are required etc.

and if you have a full system backup with Macrium Reflect or similar, then it is relatively straightforward to go back to the old windows 10 image anytime. and I believe the windows 11 upgrade process allows a rollback to win 10 within 10 days if you're not liking it...

[Agent_24]

Do you have a million unorganised files all sitting in the Downloads folder? Might just be taking ages to load the file list!

[harm_less]

Do you have a million unorganised files all sitting in the Downloads folder? Might just be taking ages to load the file list!

Nowhere near a million. 1,704 files in 187 folders, and up until a week or two ago accessing Downloads wasn't any problem. Besides King's work around of going in via Drive C is virtually instant access to the same file library so that would appear to discount your theory.

[Wainuitech]

Do you have a million unorganised files all sitting in the Downloads folder? Might just be taking ages to load the file list!

Nowhere near a million. 1,704 files in 187 folders, and up until a week or two ago accessing Downloads wasn't any problem. Besides King's work around of going in via Drive C is virtually instant access to the same file library so that would appear to discount your theory.

Going via C drive is a bit of a pain.

Theres often some corrupted files somewhere.

Something to try if you want to actually fix it.
1. open a command Prompt as administrator. run sfc /scannow  High chance it will find problems.
2. you can also run dism /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth    If it says the component store is repairable then run the same command but change the last to dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth It may appear to hang at 62.3%  Leave it - it's downloading files to repair from Microsoft, may take a while sometimes minutes sometimes an hour or more, but it will finish. OFTEN its caused by updates missing. See more reasons. DISM stuck at 62.3
3. One little trick I found fixes some problems, press windows key +R   type in %temp% there is often GB's of temp files - safe to delete the lot, some wont delete as in use but minimum.
4. If still not opening normally, try starting in safe mode - see if it opens OK  then, if so, it could be some process or program running in the background causing it.