Covering the desktop with icons

[villandra]

On 10/25/11 2:49 PM, Bill in Co wrote:




Well..........

Loading the icons on the desk top used to slow down my computer - when
it was dying. The CPU was going because teh fan had died.

Also you might not have enough RAM. Windows XP on really needs 2
gigs of RAM, especially if you installed service pack 3. And if
you're running most antivirus programs. Vipre is the lightest of
them but too much for a 1 gig system.

You can reorganize the icons on the desktop very easily. Right click
on the desk top, new, folder. Rename the folder what you want to
call it. Move stuff into it. Make as many folders as you want to.

Your desktop actually exists as a folder in my documents and settings
somewhere.

Dora

 

[W. eWatson]

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.

It's not the refresh, it's when one fires up the PC.

 

[W. eWatson]

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?

Not exactly a lot of unanimity here? Never the less, when I see my
friend again, I'll suggest a better way to organize them. I'm sure he
has well over 100. I don't think there's room for any more.

 

[Ken Springer]

Not exactly a lot of unanimity here? Never the less, when I see my
friend again, I'll suggest a better way to organize them. I'm sure he
has well over 100. I don't think there's room for any more.

I personally think, since I do deal with older and slower computers,
having a lot of icons on the desktop does slow it down.

That being said, I don't care if it's a little or a lot, I tweak
*everything* I can to make these old machines perform better.

However, if your friend is resistant to removing all those icons (I'm
assuming he understands what is going on in the computer with desktop
icons), here is a suggestion for you to give him that will keep all his
icons on the desktop, yet take up a lot less space.

1. If the Taskbar is locked, unlock it.
2. If the Quick Launch toolbar is not displayed on the Taskbar, right
click on the Taskbar, select Toolbars, and left click on Quick Launch to
display the Quick Launch toolbar in the Taskbar.
3. Right click on the vertical bar on the left side of the Quick Launch
toolbar.
4. Drag the toolbar to the desktop. The toolbar will be removed from
the Taskbar, and displayed in a resizable window on the desktop.
5. Draw a rubber band around a group of desktop icons. Right click on
the selected icons, then drag the icons to the toolbar window. Select
"Move". Continue until you have moved all the desired icons to the window.
6. All those desktop icons are now in the window.

You can right-click in the window to select 3 options for the icon
display. Given the number of icons your friend has, I would suggest
choosing small icons (View options), and Show Text.

AFAIK, any shortcut can be dragged into the window. It can basically be
turned into a cut down Start Menu.

The window remains on the desktop during reboots.

If your friend should close the window, simply repeat steps 1-4 above,
and the window with icons will be on the desktop again.

Similar tricks can be done in Vista, so I'd guess it's also possible in
Windows 7.

--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 7.0.1
Thunderbird 7.0.1
LibreOffice 3.3.4