Windows XP Explorer! Wake UP! Represent!!

[Me__2001]

how often do you defragment tyour hard drive ? roughly how big is each folder ? also how many files are in the folders ?

 

[kbreak]

I defrag daily, and it's only been 4-5 days since the system recovery.

The folders, I know, are large, about 250Mb to 2Gb with 40ish files on up.

I wouldn't whine so much except I could swear that the computer used to fling those stored thumbs up way faster.
I've waited these days to see if the thumbs just hadn't all been rendered and cached yet.

But. Opening Explorer, I sit and watch those blank folders grow photos one by one by one.. .eek

 

[Zhoul]

I have two suggestions:


1. Do you know what your desktop color depth was set to, before reloading XP?
- If so, is it set to that now?
- If not, give 16 bit a try.

2. -Click Start
- Click Run
- Type regedit , hit enter
- Back-up your registry, do a full backup. (this is simply a routine of mine and a disclaimer in and of itself)
- Navigate to this path
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
- Right-click the Explorer folder on the left -> New -> String Value
- Name it ThumbnailSize
- Acceptible values are 32 - 256. I'm not sure what windows default is, but I could tell a huge difference between 32 and 256, and I don't cache thumbnails.


Hope that works out for yah.


http://www.tss2000.nl/site_pages/tweaks.php?id=22
Googled by...

- Zhoul


P.S. - If this works, I want 1 gig of your best pictures... =)

 

[kbreak]

hey Mr. Zhoul person... I'm not sure what's happening quite yet... I did what you said, all of it.

Since I am a photographer I would always select stuff like 32-bit monitor display, etc.
However, using 16-bit, I'm surprised to not notice much if any difference!!
Never tried it, why would I want less visual quality?
I need to look into that further.

Now as far as the thumbs, they do seem a "bit" faster... and I bet I need to wait for Explorer to cache all the new ones?

At the very least, it's not hurting anything.

So I don't know about a gig of photos... but if there's a photo you like on one of my sites I suppose I could sedn you a fullrez one for your own personal use and not for mass reproduction, etc etc.

thanks again Mr. Zhoul person.

 

[Zhoul]

Load up a picture, look at it...
Set Desktop Bit depth to 16 bit... look at it...
If you can tell a difference, let me know

You can still 'edit' 32 bit pictures, you just won't see 32 bits of color.

16 Bit = 65535 colors
32 Bit = 4294967296 colors

Also, make sure you delete any thumbs.db files after making the registry change. I would assume that it may be 'adding' new pictures to thumbs.db , but not re-doing the ones that were there before registry change.

You probably didn't notice this slow-down before, because you added your pictures , possibly 1 folder at a time? In which case, each time you added a new folder, it would only have to add that folder to the pre-existing cache.

If you can't see the file thumbs.db in each folder...
- Tools
- Folder Options
- View Tab
- Select "Show Hidden Files and Folders"
- Uncheck "Hide protected operating system files"


Once you get thumbs.db deleted, move out of, then back into your main/root pictures folder.
Scroll down and make sure it loads all pictures (which will populate thumbs.db fully) then you should be about where you were.


If you were 32 bit color depth before you re-installed, then you should be able to run 32 now.

Got your newest chipset/video card/directX drivers?

Also, you set the registry value to 32, right?

Other Tips:

Got a spyware/virus scanner?
- You may want to configure it to ignore your pictures folder.

Page File:
- This one may take a wee bit of time and will require a reboot.
- Kill all programs.
- Right Click "My Computer"
- Click "Properties"
- Click the "Advanced" tab
- Click the first "Settings" button
- Click the "Advanced" tab
- Click "Change"

- Your C drive should be highlighted, click "No Paging File"
- Click "Set"
- If you have any more drives, do the same... Dont forget to click "Set" after each.
- Reboot
- Defrag the drive you want to place your swap file. (It's going to be your 'fastest' drive you'll want)

- Once Defrag completes...

- Right Click "My Computer"
- Click "Properties"
- Click the "Advanced" tab
- Click the first "Settings" button
- Click the "Advanced" tab
- Click "Change"
- C: should be highlighted, Click "Custom Size"
- Usually, we set this between 1.5-2x your RAM, unless you have over a gig, in which case 1024 is fine.
- I have 768 megs of RAM, so I Calc'd it to 1152 (or 1.5x)
- Click "Set"
- Click "Ok" > "Ok" > "Ok"

What you just did there, was set a static sized page file, which now has 0 fragments. When you let windows manage your page file, it starts it out very small, then grows 'as needed'. This can seriously fragment the pagefile across your paging drive, causing much slowness. Also, if windows needs more page file, it won't have to Check, Allocate, Check, Write - It will simply read/write.


If after all that, and it's still slow, check this thread out.
http://www.alegsa.com.ar/Visitas/index11/Slow thumbnail cache.php

If after all that, and it's still slow, Gun In Mouth > Pull Trigger =)


p.s.

Ooh, online insta-access to j0r pix

 

[kbreak]

heywaitaminute -- so the "thumbs.db" search... shouldn't it cough up a ton of explorer's thumbs???

uh oh.

Is the search parameter wrong??

and I went and looked anyways and ...

hmmm.

Let me make a cuppa coffee here and ponder for a minute, this is not what I expected.
Are explorer thumbs not labelled "thumbs.db"?

I think this thumb file is from Picasa2 but... suddenly I'm not so sure about stuff no more.

If I din't know no better I'd think that XP is not caching thumbs... ow my head

 

[kbreak]

PS I did the page file thing even though there was a full system recovery last week.

now

where are the XP thumb files?!?!

grr.

 

[kbreak]

... and then I used msconfig to do a basic startup with all the bells and whistles off, opened Explorer and it took five minutes to render the folder thumbs as per that screenshot on my first post.

Then I opened a folder and after the thumbs loaded I looked for the thumb file inside and it's not there.

*looks for glass object to hurl*

 

[kbreak]

You know, it's a very odd aspect about myself, that as soon as I give up poking around and post my question, I find the answer myself.

Only this time it's good news/ bad news.

I missed the one check mark in Folder Options to reveal protected system files....

and .db thumbs are in the folders.... YAY? NAY!

it's still the same slowness.

So I don't mind looking like a tard, if only... the thumbs would jump out at me...

if wishes were horses, beggars would ride

 

[kbreak]

kay, I just deleted 131Mb of .db thumb files.

Now I'm letting them rebuild....

*sings* if I only had a brain...
[/wizardofoz]

 

[kbreak]

holy giant m00m00 cows Batman!

From five minutes-ish to about one second!

I give unto you, oh Zhoul person, one of these:

and one of these:

and of course.... (looks around) ... TWO of these --

shhh before the moderators find this!

now, NOW I can sleep tonight...

thankyouverymuch.


ps. so what's all that googly references in your profile?

 

[Zhoul]

Right on bruddah man! You were hitting the nail on the head when talking about different thumb type files being present. Things like photoshop install thumbnail creators and such, so watch out for those in the future.

As for the current thumbs you deleted, excellent job. As we said earlier, if a thumbnail has been created for a file, it will skip the regeneration of that thumb, even if your thumbnail settings have been changed (so it was still loading the bigger versions of thumbnails, and adding any that didn't exist already).

Wow... I don't have a speech prepared... *tear*.. what can I say.. I'd like to thank Intelligence, Wisdom, and of course, our all mighty savior, Google. Peace !

ps. so what's all that googly references in your profile?

Way back in the day (umm, like 15 years ago), A tech actually needed extensive knowledge and experience with PC's, in order to fix 'new' issues. Today, however, in the age of information, it is more likely then not that someone else has experienced an issue that any one of us could run into. Further: It's more likely then not, that there are massive threads on such issues that can be read, comprehended, then applied to another situation.

One of the references you speak of, is "h3wh0g00gle4u" , or ... "He Who Google For You"...

I've found myself to be quite the lazy "Google Tech" these days, as it's proven 9/10 to put me, at least in the right direction of finding and fixing an issue, at least 200-300% faster, as compared to 'back in the day'.

I've also found that 9/10, I can take the question the customer has asked, drop it directly into google (maybe modified a bit) and find the answer in the first 3-5 links produced. If you look at any other posts I run here, I note if I've pulled links, or the fix itself directly from google - This is to promote the use of google for self-repair/learning, as some people have waited weeks in frustration for that which was already out there to begin with.

This thread was a good one, because it shows where taking info directly from google won't give us *the* answer, but it surely lead to repair there of, and a *much* greater understanding of how the repaired system functions. This leads to greater understanding of an entire system, which leads to resolving future issues that much easier =) This is an accomplishment that few people reach when 'seeking' help, as they think having just the answer will be good enough.

If you had just been given a step-by-step on what to do, without having to test a few things yourself, it's very possible another issue around this could pop up, and you'd be at a complete loss, as you wouldn't have gained as much knowledge on 'how it works' as you did

So for that, you get one of my barbie twins. I tried to fit them both into my new porsche`, but with an Emmy and 1 barbie twin, lets just say it's a bit cramped already =) (that, and I really don't need two women nagging at me at any one time no matter how good the... cooking.. is).


Hats off to ye sir! And may the thumbs be with you...

 

[kbreak]

'tis true that I came here through the majestick Power and Glorie that is [highlight]G 0 0 G L E[/highlight]--

fear not, I will return.