QuickLaunch

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave B
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Dave B

I have a pretty full comp, and a lot of icons on the Quicklaunch bar. It
does take this comp a while to boot up. Do these icons actually use
significant resources even if they represent programs that are not really
open. Much office discussion about this,TSRs, etc.

There is also the question, from a resource standpoint, are they any
different than having an icon on the desktop?

Would appreciate the straight story from one of you expert types.

Thanks all
 
Hi there,

You may like to follow the below step to expedite the boot process:

1. Click Start, run, type "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks" (with
out quotation marks) and click OK.
 
I have a pretty full comp, and a lot of icons on the Quicklaunch bar. It
does take this comp a while to boot up. Do these icons actually use
significant resources even if they represent programs that are not really
open. Much office discussion about this,TSRs, etc.

There is also the question, from a resource standpoint, are they any
different than having an icon on the desktop?

Would appreciate the straight story from one of you expert types.

Thanks all
Click to expand...

Quick Launch is very, very light on the system. It displays icons only. No
programs are started until the user clicks on a Quick Launch shortcut to
launch the program. Feel free to use many shortcuts in this location if
that makes this toolbar more useful to you.
 
In
Dave B said:
I have a pretty full comp, and a lot of icons on the
Quicklaunch bar.
It does take this comp a while to boot up. Do these icons
actually
use significant resources even if they represent programs that
are
not really open.

No.


Much office discussion about this,TSRs, etc.

There is also the question, from a resource standpoint, are
they any
different than having an icon on the desktop?
Click to expand...


No. They are just shortcuts, and it doesn't really matter where
those shortcuts are located.

Regarding how long it takes for your computer to boot, my
personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long
it takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the speed is
otherwise satisfactory, it may not be worth worrying about. Most
people start their computers once a day or even less frequently.
In the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up
isn't very important. Personally I power on my computer when I
get up in the morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back,
it's done booting. I don't know how long it took to boot and I
don't care.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

On the other hand if your computer is generally slow, there may
be issues you should address. If that's the case, post back for
more help.
 
Meena - Well, OK, but I before I do that could you tell me what I would be
doing??
And is it reversible? (other than Restore Point?)
Dave
 
Ken -
Couldn't agree more boot time is a non event other than a good time to fill
the coffee cup. Situation here, tho, is interesting. I have 2 nearly
identical comps on a LAN, one with many more aps than the other. The
simpler of the two boots in half the time. (Come to think of it, the slow
one is the host. Does that make a difference?)

Just wondered.

Dave
 
In
Dave B said:
Couldn't agree more boot time is a non event other than a good
time
to fill the coffee cup. Situation here, tho, is interesting.
I have
2 nearly identical comps on a LAN, one with many more aps than
the
other.
Click to expand...


When you say "many more apps," do you mean more apps starting
automatically at boot time, or just more apps installed? The
latter makes no difference to boot time, but the former can make
a big difference. Here's my standard response on programs
starting automatically:


On each program you don't want to start automatically, check its
Options to see if it has the choice not to start. Many can easily
and best be stopped that way. If that doesn't work, run MSCONFIG
from the Start | Run line, and on the Startup tab, uncheck the
programs you don't want to start automatically.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't do this just for the purpose
of running the minimum number of programs. Despite what many
people tell you, you should be concerned, not with how many of
these programs you run, but which. Some of them can hurt
performance severely, but others have no effect on performance.

Don't just stop programs from running willy-nilly. What you
should do is determine what each program is, what its value is to
you, and what the cost in performance is of its running all the
time. You can get more information about these with at
http://castlecops.com/StartupList.html. If you can't find it
there, try google searches and ask about specifics here.

Once you have that information, you can make an intelligent
informed decision about what you want to keep and what you want
to get rid of.
 
Meena - Well, OK, but I before I do that could you tell me what I would be
doing??
And is it reversible? (other than Restore Point?)
Click to expand...

The command forces a run of some XP house keeping duties normally performed
in the background. Specifically, a light run of defrag that uses prefetch
data to organize files on the hard drive for easier and faster access. This
would happen normally about every three days. You might notice some
performance increase if this is a newer XP setup or an older one that has
had extensive recent changes. On the other hand, there may be no difference
but running the command will not hurt anything.
 
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