Gmail Open dialog hangs when attempting to attach file - Google Chrome

[Ron]

One of our users encountered a problem with the Open dialog that appears when clicking the attachment (paperclip) icon in Gmail. The dialog would hang with the message "Working on it..." in the file/folder listing part of the dialog.

I don't know how long the user has tried waiting. Maybe a minute? If the user would click a different location such as Desktop or click the close button at the top right, the dialog would change to "not responding." I created a new folder (Downloads2) in the user's profile and temporarily moved all (about 800 items) but a few files from the user's Downloads folder to Downloads2. The Gmail attachment Open dialog worked normally again. I moved everything from Downloads2 back to Downloads and worked with the user to delete the 50 or so largest items. Even so, the problem had returned. The user then suggested deleting the most recent file, a Word document, he had saved to Downloads. After doing so, the Gmail attachment Open dialog worked as usual. I'm curious if others have encountered this or a similar problem and how you resolved it? I'm wondering how one would identify a possible problem file...? Thankfully the user thought to delete a recently downloaded file, apparently considering that the problem had only recently surfaced.

[GLMyers]

Although a corrupt file may well have been the issue, there may well be a problem with the drive that caused the corruption. The description of the problem and resolution indicates to me it was merely a manifestation of the problem on the machine and not related directly to Gmail. I highly recommend ensuring the files on the computer are backed up and doing some general maintenance just to be certain.

[Kim_Nilsson]

I agree. This shouldn't be limited to Gmail only, but to every Chrome file picker action.

I'm assuming the Explorer window that opens wants to show all content with the appropriate thumbnail image based on file type, and it's getting stuck somewhere.

[Ron]

I agree that it doesn't seem to be directly related to Gmail, but I found it interesting that the problem seemed to specifically affect the Open dialog that appears when clicking the attachment/paperclip icon. I'm guessing that Open dialog is an OpenFileDialog class object. Out of curiosity, I had also changed the user's Chrome download setting to prompt each time for the location to save downloads, so a Save As ("file picker") dialog would appear when downloading a file. I had guessed the problem would also appear with the Save As dialog, when it attempted to enumerate/list Downloads folder contents, and was surprised when it didn't. Edit: the Save As dialog filters by the type of file being downloaded and my test download was a PDF document. The problem may also have appeared for the Save As dialog if I had tested downloading a Word document instead.

[Kim_Nilsson]

Do keep us updated as you test more.

[YERKO]

Saludos

Siguiendo la linea de sugerencias, quizas hacer el mismo ejercicio desde otro computador, intentando descargar el mismo archivo (en la carpeta descargas) si eso funciona entonces descartamos el problema de gmail y comenzar a trabajar en el equipo, tal como aconsejan haciendo limpieza de archivos y actualizando su sistema operativo.

éxito!