Accessing my Downloads folder

[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.