Do you have an exceptionally large number of music files stored in there? And do you have a reasonably old computer?
Try splitting your music collection into different folders.
I've just got i-tunes, and it's brilliant at organizing and copying your files and may negate the need for you to open your My Music folder.
i have 15.7mb stored in Start/My Music........is that still too much to have there? It causes everything to slow away down/freeze when opening...any help appreciated.
try this, copy all the music to a new folder. (My music is also fine), then try again. Try also defragging your PC's HDD, and check your PC for spyware with Adaware(www.lavasoft.de), or Virus's (AVG antivirus is free)...Finally what Processor do you have (I would suggest anything over 1Gighz AMD or Intel)and I am hoping you have at least 256-500mb of Ram...
Defragging will hardly make any difference in this case. I have experimented in the past with 20GIGS of music files in one folder and the only way to speed things up is to split into subfolders. i originally split mine into 1-2 gig and now that they are all back up to around 4 gigs they are starting to slow down again.
If everything on the PC is slowing up then you probably do need to defrag and search out spyware, but if its just this one big folder it just needs splitting up a bit
I believe the reason for the shocking performance is due to the fact it's in a music folder and not just a folder. I'll explain...
I have 1500 mp3s in a regular type of folder which i created called Music on my hard-drive. This folder has the default folder settings (these can be viewed by right-clicking on the folder and pressing properties. I believe it is the far right tab.)
A music folder which xp has created will be set to give artist details and analyse this information when opened, which will take a considerable amount of time as it reads ID3 tags and the like. So i suggest you either grin and bear it or change the properties of the folder to documents and change the display to list will also help then (not on music as this display everything!).
I sometimes put all the artist details in in my music folder and it takes several minutes to display the result, nightmare!
Hope this helps.
i just checked something and realised the far right-tab i spoke of ("customise") isn't on the xp created folder (my music, my pictures, my documents etc.) so you will have to create a new folder for it to display more efficiently i think.