Desktop Icon Lag

  • Thread starter Thread starter zecarioca
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zecarioca

I have a fairly new system, running XP home edition. I
have plenty of ram and the processor is a Celeron 1.2 ghz.

When I am running an application and either close the
application and therefore default back to my desktop, or
just go directly to my desktop (by clicking the "Show
Desktop" toolbar), my desktop icons take a while to load
up again. The desktop shows the icon "skeletons" at
first, and then the color and graphics load in. This
process may take 1-2 seconds. Is there a way to speed
this, or ensure that the icon graphics stay loaded.

thank you,
 
hello
Mine does the same thing and have a 356 mb ram and have 3.0 ghz athon. I
always thought it was normal and never really worried about it.
I've been running that way for about a year now never had any problems with
my computer.
Like when I'm running cool edit pro or magix music studio that uses alot of
memory right when I close the window it will look like that for just a
second or a little longer. I would'nt really worry about it. it seemed kind
of funny to me to at first because win 98 never did that but i got used to
it after awhile.......Richard
 
I have a fairly new system, running XP home edition. I
have plenty of ram and the processor is a Celeron 1.2 ghz.

When I am running an application and either close the
application and therefore default back to my desktop, or
just go directly to my desktop (by clicking the "Show
Desktop" toolbar), my desktop icons take a while to load
up again. The desktop shows the icon "skeletons" at
first, and then the color and graphics load in. This
process may take 1-2 seconds. Is there a way to speed
this, or ensure that the icon graphics stay loaded.

thank you,
Click to expand...


I don't have the same problem, but mine load twice on a boot or
reboot. They appear virtually instantly (sometimes with the standard
windows icon) when the desktop comes up, disappear, there's about a
two second gap and then they reappear again. Kind of getting used to
it, but would like to know how to prevent this, if possible.
 
Richard said:
Mine does the same thing and have a 356 mb ram and have 3.0 ghz athon.
Click to expand...

That blows my suspicion. I would have guessed low ram. Without enough
memory the icon cache is dumped in favor of other uses and you have to
reload the icons from the disk each time you redisplay them. If you
have dozens of icons Windows may have to step the read heads back and
forth across the drive dozens of times, adding up to a few seconds in
bad cases. But you ruined that theory. :)

Alex
 
E. Barry Bruyea said:
I don't have the same problem, but mine load twice on a boot or
reboot. They appear virtually instantly (sometimes with the standard
windows icon) when the desktop comes up, disappear, there's about a
two second gap and then they reappear again. Kind of getting used to
it, but would like to know how to prevent this, if possible.
Click to expand...

One of the MVPs can confirm or debunk my theory, but here's what I think
happens (it happens to me too). While you use your system, Windows
caches the icons on the desktop to a file in the system area. When you
restart memory is empty. As a way to speed up display (humans are
impatient creatures) Windows displays whatever is in the icon cache from
the last session. Then when it has time, it goes back and loads the
proper icons from the proper files on disk just in case the cache is out
of date. With Win95/98 I sometimes tricked the system so that the first
set of icons it displayed were different from the second set.

What I find odd and annoying is that Windows will display the full name
under the icon at first, then when it redisplays the icons will often
truncate the names. If you hit F5 (refresh) the full names will appear
until you click on something, then they get truncated again. With XP it
isn't so bad because only long icon names get truncated, but under Win98
it would truncate "www" to "ww..." which was actually longer than the
correct icon name.

Alex
 
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