5 threading methods, none sped up the program

[woooee]

It appears that you are reading some of the same files in different threads. You start in different places, but starting with 1, will still read 2, which possibly will conflict with the process starting with 2. Read the directory and split the files up into 5 pieces and try passing each one of the 5 pieces to a different Process to see if this is the problem.