Will a large number of shortcuts slow XP performance?

[John Faughnan]

Because of the way I work, my XP NTFS system has a very large number of
shortcuts. (I really need a semantic network file system.)

Lately I've noticed some peculiar performance delays. The Favorites
view, for example, has many shortcuts in it. They can take up to a
minute to resolve fully into folders, until then they display a generic
IE icon. When saving using a shortcut, the system can halt for some
time. During these halts task manager shows no particular activity.
It's like a thread has been stopped.

I wonder if I'm running into some limit on the number of shortcuts XP
can handle. Once upon a time shortcuts were pretty simple minded and
could not impact performance, but I've wondered if XP may be doing some
things to try to make them behave more like Mac aliases (which in the
Mac Classic world were marvelous and had true indirection) -- including
sometimes updating them dynamically.

Is there anything possibly to this? A google search didn't turn
anything up.

john
(e-mail address removed)

meta: jfaughnan, NTFS, shortcut, XP, shortcut, aliases, performance,
refresh, display, resolve

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

I would recommend performing some computer housecleaning
maintenance:

Download the thirty day trial version of System Mechanic and
scan your computer for 'Junk Files', then 'Find and Fix Broken Shortcuts'.
http://www.iolo.com/sm/5/index.cfm

System Mechanic Optimization Tools
http://www.iolo.com/sm/5/index.cfm#optimize

Then perform the following:

Download Ad-aware SE and scan your PC for the presence of sp­yware:
http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html?part=69274&subj=dlpage&tag=button

Symantec Security Check
http://security.symantec.com/ssc/home.asp?langid=ie&venid=sym&plfid=23&pkj=FTPSUQIZQVMUYTACDCO

Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...a2-6a57-4c57-a8bd-dbf62eda9671&displaylang=en

3 Simple Steps to Help Ensure the Protection of Your PC
http://www.microsoft.com/athom­e/security/protect/default.msp­x

Utilize the following maintenance programs, at least monthly,
to maintain the optimum performance of Windows XP:

Description of the Disk Cleanup Tool in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310312&Product=winxp

How to Perform Disk Error Checking in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315265&Product=winxp

HOW TO: Analyze and Defragment a Disk in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305781&Product=winxp

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

Get Windows XP Service Pack 2 with Advanced Security Technologies:
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/windowsxp/choose.mspx

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| Because of the way I work, my XP NTFS system has a very large number of
| shortcuts. (I really need a semantic network file system.)
|
| Lately I've noticed some peculiar performance delays. The Favorites
| view, for example, has many shortcuts in it. They can take up to a
| minute to resolve fully into folders, until then they display a generic
| IE icon. When saving using a shortcut, the system can halt for some
| time. During these halts task manager shows no particular activity.
| It's like a thread has been stopped.
|
| I wonder if I'm running into some limit on the number of shortcuts XP
| can handle. Once upon a time shortcuts were pretty simple minded and
| could not impact performance, but I've wondered if XP may be doing some
| things to try to make them behave more like Mac aliases (which in the
| Mac Classic world were marvelous and had true indirection) -- including
| sometimes updating them dynamically.
|
| Is there anything possibly to this? A google search didn't turn
| anything up.
|
| john

 

[John Faughnan]

Thanks! I ended up disabling repair of broken shortcuts:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;299780&sd=tech

This seems to have done the trick, my system performance is fine and
the shortcuts now display properly. I think I might have overwhelmed
XP's ability to do shorcut maintenance. NTFS really needs a true file
identifier, and the ability to lookup a file location from the
identifier. I guess we'll get in Longhorn the capabilities that MacOS
Classic had in 1986 (thought OS X, with its unix roots, doesn't do
quite as well as 1986 Classic did in this regard).

I'll try a utility to find and repair shortcuts (there's one in the
Win2K Admin toolkit I think) or try the one you mentioned. Then if that
works I'll try turning shortcut repair back on and reassess
performance.

Thanks!

john
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Richard Urban [MVP]]

OS2 had that capability also. If you created a shortcut on the desktop, and
then moved the file, the icon would refresh to the new location.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from: George Ankner
"If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!"

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

Because of the way I work, my XP NTFS system has a very large number of
shortcuts. (I really need a semantic network file system.)

By "semantic file system", do you mean something that "thinks" for
you, i.e. content indexing, etc.? Well, that overhead *hurts*.

Lately I've noticed some peculiar performance delays. The Favorites
view, for example, has many shortcuts in it. They can take up to a
minute to resolve fully into folders, until then they display a generic
IE icon. When saving using a shortcut, the system can halt for some
time. During these halts task manager shows no particular activity.
It's like a thread has been stopped.

Yep - that's why per-file overhead sucks. MS seems to test this with
light loads (say, 20 files) before rolling it out out on a "you won't
even feel the overhead" basis. Even pulling icons is slow, especially
when there are a lot of files, and/or they are on "slow"storage, e.g.

I wonder if I'm running into some limit on the number of shortcuts XP
can handle. Once upon a time shortcuts were pretty simple minded and
could not impact performance, but I've wondered if XP may be doing some
things to try to make them behave more like Mac aliases (which in the
Mac Classic world were marvelous and had true indirection) -- including
sometimes updating them dynamically.

Persistent handlers that dig into content when all you wanted to do is
"list" things, will hurt both in terms of performance, and risk. Same
goes for background indexing services, and anything else that digs
into the content of files without you specifically asking it to do so.

The performance pain is familiar to you by now, but the other shoe
hasn't dropped yet - that every code surface that "touches" content
could be directly exploitable by malware via "unchecked buffer" etc.

To troubleshoot this, compare:
- Safe Mode ("best" case?)
- Normal mode, online ("worst" case)
- Normal mode, offline
- Normal mode, all peripherals disconnected
- Normal mode with all MSConfig startup items disabled
- Normal mode with all non-MS services disabled (stay offline!)
- Normal mode, using Shell Extensions Viewer to disable extensions

Shell Extensions Viewer is a very useful tool from www.nirsoft.net
(not the ".com" site!!) that lists things that integrate into the
shell, and allow these to be reversably disabled (nonetheless, be
careful what you disable). It's great for spotting some causes of
this sort of problem, or "why does my PC try to dial out whenever I
use Windows Explorer?" (common answer: Norton LiveUpdate)

Is there anything possibly to this? A google search didn't turn
anything up.

It's a hard topic to Google for; what to use as the biopsy?

meta: jfaughnan, NTFS, shortcut, XP, shortcut, aliases, performance,
refresh, display, resolve

OK, those are guuuud ;-)

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The most accurate diagnostic instrument
in medicine is the Retrospectoscope