What’s happened? Microsoft rolled out a background-preloading update for File Explorer in Windows 11 Insider builds , hoping to make it open faster and feel smoother. The idea here was to keep parts of Explorer loaded in memory, so it pops up instantly when you click it. While that sounds smart, the reality is quite the opposite. As revealed in testing by Windows Latest , Explorer still lags compared to Windows 10, and preloading ends up using more system RAM.

In side-by-side tests, Windows 11’s “preloaded” File Explorer opened slower than Windows 10’s regular Explorer, even on lightweight hardware.

The new version consumes extra memory in the background, meaning systems with modest RAM (e.g., 4-8 GB) may feel sluggish when multitasking.

The context menu and folder navigation rem

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