I helped a friend the other day with a problem on his XP laptop PC, and
noticed he had completely filled the desktop with icons of all sorts.
Programs, point to Google, IE, Skype, etc. I do believe this can greatly
slow down the boot-up. Right? Any other potential problems?

On 23/10/2011 6:56 PM, W. eWatson wrote:
> I helped a friend the other day with a problem on his XP laptop PC, and
> noticed he had completely filled the desktop with icons of all sorts.
> Programs, point to Google, IE, Skype, etc. I do believe this can greatly
> slow down the boot-up. Right? Any other potential problems?

No, it doesn't make any difference at all.

John

I think it can slow down Explorer a bit if there are a huge
number of files on the Desktop, but other than that, it's
really just a matter of personal preference. I have a blind
friend whose Desktop is grotesquely cluttered because he
downloads and saves files there, but he usually finds files
by searching, so he never notices how many files are on
the Desktop. I've seen no sign of problems from that. My
own Desktop typically has about 40 regular icons and sometimes
as many as 100. It boots quickly.

It might take a few extra ms to paint the screen, but I
doubt very much that it's enough to notice. To my mind
the whole point of the Desktop is to use it, like a desk, not
to have it look pretty for the sake of MS marketing. Anyone
who is the least bit concerned with wasteful, time-consuming
problems in that category would do well to disable the Fischer-
Price Desktop and go with Classic view. The former is
essentially a skin that must be constantly repainted.
(And of course that particular load gets much worse with the
Vista/7 Aero transparency. That was the "feature" that made
Vista unsuitable for some existing CPUs when it came out.)


|I helped a friend the other day with a problem on his XP laptop PC, and
| noticed he had completely filled the desktop with icons of all sorts.
| Programs, point to Google, IE, Skype, etc. I do believe this can greatly
| slow down the boot-up. Right? Any other potential problems?

John John MVP wrote:
> On 23/10/2011 6:56 PM, W. eWatson wrote:
>> I helped a friend the other day with a problem on his XP laptop PC, and
>> noticed he had completely filled the desktop with icons of all sorts.
>> Programs, point to Google, IE, Skype, etc. I do believe this can greatly
>> slow down the boot-up. Right? Any other potential problems?
>
> No, it doesn't make any difference at all.

This is completely *not* true. Having many icons significantly slows
down any desktop refresh (and there are many such when different
explorer functions work). I was frustrated having to wait many seconds
(up to 30) per desktop refresh, until I set the Max Cached Icons reg
key to 12,000. Now it doesn't matter indeed, but I doubt many people
have it figured out.

--
You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.
*
Whoever bans a book, shall be banished. Whoever burns a book, shall burn.

Yes it slows down the system because the icons needs to be refreshed all
the time at boot time. John John is a pedo and should not be relied upon.

W. eWatson wrote:
> I helped a friend the other day with a problem on his XP laptop PC,
> and noticed he had completely filled the desktop with icons of all
> sorts. Programs, point to Google, IE, Skype, etc. I do believe this
> can greatly slow down the boot-up. Right? Any other potential problems?

--

Al Sparber - PVII
http://www.projectseven.com
Dreamweaver Menus | Galleries | Widgets

Bill in Co wrote:
> Patok wrote:
>> John John MVP wrote:
>>> On 23/10/2011 6:56 PM, W. eWatson wrote:
>>>> I helped a friend the other day with a problem on his XP laptop PC, and
>>>> noticed he had completely filled the desktop with icons of all sorts.
>>>> Programs, point to Google, IE, Skype, etc. I do believe this can greatly
>>>> slow down the boot-up. Right? Any other potential problems?
>>> No, it doesn't make any difference at all.
>> This is completely *not* true. Having many icons significantly slows
>> down any desktop refresh (and there are many such when different
>> explorer functions work). I was frustrated having to wait many seconds
>> (up to 30) per desktop refresh, until I set the Max Cached Icons reg
>> key to 12,000. Now it doesn't matter indeed, but I doubt many people
>> have it figured out.
>
> Interesting. I've got my desktop covered with icons (but I'm only using
> 800x600 resolution), and doing a refresh is instantaneous. (All of the
> icons are just shortcuts to the programs, as they should be). So it appears
> that it is not necesarily true that a desktop full of icons takes long to
> refresh.

Interesting. First of all, I'd never be able to work at such low
resolutions, has to be at least 1024 *vertically*, but I don't think it
has anything to do, apart from the larger number of icons (at least
three times your number) I can fit.

I suspect that (part of) the reason in my case might be the
antivirus. In all cases when it was slow (I remember that vividly) the
disk was accessing, and accessing, and accessing... And my AV (McAffee)
has the bad habit of checking accessed files on access, so...
Another example of such AV induced slow-down is when I open to play a
video file in a folder containing thousands of files. My default player
(BsPlayer) has the feature to scan the rest of the folder when playing a
file, and add all media to its playlist. And of course McAffee has to
scan each of them too, to make sure they're safe. I remember how on one
of my previous computers (a 500MHz PIII), it would take minutes sitting
there doing nothing and spinning the disk, if I had, forgetting the
"feature", clicked to play a video in an over-populated folder.

--
You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.
*
Whoever bans a book, shall be banished. Whoever burns a book, shall burn.

On 10/23/2011 10:27 PM, Bill in Co wrote:

> I occasionally am forced into using the 1024x768 resolution by some
> programs, but don't like it all that much. I like the larger font/text
> sizes with 800x600, and don't need to see the whole world at once on my
> screen. Then again, I'm not doing any spreadsheets or the like - or any
> multitasking, either.

You can have it both ways by choosing a higher resolution and then under
the monitor advanced settings choosing a large DPI setting.

Or, you could choose a higher resolution and change the text sizes, but
that is a lot more work to change the several text sizes.

--
Cheers, Bob

On 10/23/2011 7:45 PM, Patok wrote:
> John John MVP wrote:
>> On 23/10/2011 6:56 PM, W. eWatson wrote:
>>> I helped a friend the other day with a problem on his XP laptop PC, and
>>> noticed he had completely filled the desktop with icons of all sorts.
>>> Programs, point to Google, IE, Skype, etc. I do believe this can greatly
>>> slow down the boot-up. Right? Any other potential problems?
>>
>> No, it doesn't make any difference at all.
>
> This is completely *not* true. Having many icons significantly slows
> down any desktop refresh (and there are many such when different
> explorer functions work). I was frustrated having to wait many seconds
> (up to 30) per desktop refresh, until I set the Max Cached Icons reg key
> to 12,000. Now it doesn't matter indeed, but I doubt many people have it
> figured out.

Realistically how many icons can you stuff on the desktop before 'you
can't see the forest because of the trees'? For the refresh to be an
issue you would have to stuff more of them on the Desktop than you could
possibly keep track of and the desktop would become nearly impossible to
use because of the clutter.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...c-68b599b31bf5

John

On 10/23/2011 8:20 PM, Al Sparber wrote:
>
> Yes it slows down the system because the icons needs to be refreshed all
> the time at boot time. John John is a pedo and should not be relied upon.
>
> W. eWatson wrote:
>> I helped a friend the other day with a problem on his XP laptop PC,
>> and noticed he had completely filled the desktop with icons of all
>> sorts. Programs, point to Google, IE, Skype, etc. I do believe this
>> can greatly slow down the boot-up. Right? Any other potential problems?
>

You don't know what you are talking about. This might have been a issue
on Windows 9x but on Windows XP it's nothing but an old wives tale!

It doesn't reflect very well on a so called 'professional' to post these
kind of personal libelous statements along with his credentials and
links to his web site. Your potential customers might not think much of
your newsgroup manners. If you push the wrong buttons you may not like
the consequences...you would be surprised how easy (and cheap) it is to
stack Google hit returns with a few Chinese freelancers.

On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:20:33 +0100, Al Sparber wrote:

> Yes it slows down the system because the icons needs to be refreshed all
> the time at boot time. John John is a pedo ...

As a general rule, one should not rely on the information provided by
Internet accusers. They clearly have some kind of prejudice, which will
color their advice.

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum