>>This didn't work for me. It took 32 s. to create a file and the returned files are in DOS like way (short names).
>
>I have a similar directory, with 27400 small images. First I thought you had foxpro.pif which uses command.com instead of cmd.exe, so I invoked each and ran dir >dir.txt. The time in both cases was below a second.
>
>The format of the text was like this (with just plain DIR, no switches):
>

22.01.2005  11:17            39,749 CP701760.jpg
>22.01.2005  11:17            35,626 CP701761.jpg
>09.03.2004  12:37            23,487 No-Show-Image.jpg
>07.02.2006  13:27                60 nocopy.BAK
>07.02.2006  13:29               284 nocopy.bat

>
>Maybe you could use shell_execute to run the command? Just create a .bat file and run that. Shouldn't take that long. Even with my disk being recently defragmented, the difference shouldn't be so large.

Would it still show the DOS window? I'd like to avoid it. I also didn't see times, only the file names like 1234~.jpg I run the command exactly as Hilmar wrote using my folder name and *.jpg

Also note, that the directory resides on the server, not on my local drive.