The OP has reported that his "My Photos" folder opens almost
instantaneously in "detail" view - but takes a long time to open in
"thumbnail" mode. That indicates that delays occur, when the computer
creates icons or thumbnail images. These symptoms may be related to one
(or more) of the following factors:
Hardware issues (processor, HDD or graphics card)
You are running Win XP with only 512 MB Ram, which is barely adequate.
Excessive use of Virtual Memory, associated with the read/write speed of
your HDD
Running Windows XP with only 512 Mb RAM leads to increased dependence
upon Virtual Memory (where the processor reads and writes data from and
to temporary locations on the HDD). Consequently, the problems might be
related to Virtual Memory settings and/or the read/write speed of the
primary HDD.
It always takes a while to create picture thumbnails, when there many
large files in a folder. Consequently, folders will open more quickly,
if files have been transferred to sub-folders.
However, the OP reported that pictures open quickly from a folder on an
external G drive - which suggests that the size of folder and the
processor, graphics card and RAM might not be primary issues.
He should also consider the following possibility. When the user
configures a folder to display picture files in "thumbnail" mode,
Windows will create a hidden system file named "thumbs.db". There might
be a problem with this system file on the OP's computer. He could try
the following workaround, to re-create the "thumbs.db" file.
1. Open the folder.
2. Click on Tools | Folder Options | View - and select "show hidden
files and folders". Save your settings.
3. Switch to detail view.
4. Delete the "thumbs.db" file.
4. Close the folder
5. Re-open the folder and switch back to "thumbnail" view.
If that doesn't help, he could try additional RAM. Windows XP runs much
better with a minimum of 1 Gb RAM.
Mark F said:
(Using top posting to conform with what was done previously in this
thread.)
The original poster (OP) copied his "My Pictures", which I assume
is his My Documents\My Pictures
to another directory having the name "My Pictures" and the performance
problem went away.
While the comments of (e-mail address removed) are valid in general, they
don't address the OPs question or problem, which are:
Q can the OP simply delete the original My Pictures and rename
the copy (so it is in My Documents) ?
P why was the performance on the C drive slow?
In answer for Q: I'm sure that there are some issues with Access
Control Lists (ACLs), so I would not just delete and rename, but
rather wait for further information from someone who can describe
how to do things correctly.
As for P, I thought the OP said both the copy on G and the additional
copy that he made provided fast access, so the problem doesn't seem
to be with the C drive, but perhaps something messed up in the
My Documents/My Pictures. I suggest deleting all of the files
in the My Documents/My Pictures directory and then copying the
files back one of the other two copies that he has.
Perhaps this will make the problem go away. If the problem doesn't
go away than he can try deleting and recreating the file with the
proper ACL.
However, my recommendation is not to store anything that you have
control over in anything that Windows knows about, since it has been
my experience that Windows loses the stuff in the places that it
knows about more often than I forget to backup my stuff but would
have been saved by some automatic backup that Windows did of the
stuff it knew about.
