Win XP Home Desktop Refresh Annoyance

[Glenn]

Win XP Home is refreshing the desktop icons too frequently
and too slowly. I have tried to follow the Win XP Pro
instruction to increase icon cache size but it seems to
have no effect. Is there a different method in XP Home?

Background:

If I click and open folders on my hard drive (especially a
shared folder), or if I click and open folders on other
computers on my network, and sometimes when opening My
Computer, my system will temporarily freeze,
the desktop icons will disappear (not the wallpaper)
including those in the system tray, the screen will
refresh, the icons reappear and things will work normally.

The problem happens less often when opening folders on my
system, but more often with shared folders. It almost
always happens when clicking and opening mapped drives or
shared folders on other computers within my home wireless
network. After the refreshing process, everything always
works fine. But the 5-10 second delay in being able to
continue is very irritating.

 

[Rocket J. Squirrel]

Checked for viruses and malware?

Rocky

 

[Glenn]

Yes. Already did all the normal stuff...even to modifying
the Registry setting as described in the original msg.

 

[Quaoar]

Win XP Home is refreshing the desktop icons too frequently
and too slowly. I have tried to follow the Win XP Pro
instruction to increase icon cache size but it seems to
have no effect. Is there a different method in XP Home?

Background:

If I click and open folders on my hard drive (especially a
shared folder), or if I click and open folders on other
computers on my network, and sometimes when opening My
Computer, my system will temporarily freeze,
the desktop icons will disappear (not the wallpaper)
including those in the system tray, the screen will
refresh, the icons reappear and things will work normally.

The problem happens less often when opening folders on my
system, but more often with shared folders. It almost
always happens when clicking and opening mapped drives or
shared folders on other computers within my home wireless
network. After the refreshing process, everything always
works fine. But the 5-10 second delay in being able to
continue is very irritating.

This *might* be an artifact of your computer updating mapped network
drives every time you access your directories, i.e., a networking issue.
If you have many mapped drives and a 802.11b wireless, this can be a
slow process, depending on how much updating is required. I don't map
drives since it seems to be largely overkill on my network.

Q

 

[Guest]

This *might* be an artifact of your computer updating mapped network
drives every time you access your directories, i.e., a networking issue.
If you have many mapped drives and a 802.11b wireless, this can be a
slow process, depending on how much updating is required. I don't map
drives since it seems to be largely overkill on my network.

Q

Hi...

patience you need to learn patience. Your answer would be how long will that take.
That is normal in a network. Many factors could be affecting this delay. one is that the remote computer you are accessing has power saving features enabled that shut down those drives within a certain time. These drives have to spin up again so the remote system can relay the directory info from that network share. If you access these shared resources frequently within a session and an anoying delay of five to fifteen seconds is going to ruin your day. So be it. The only issue you should consider is how fast is your network. Are you getting expected performance from your network when copying files to and from systems. Not much I can do for you there. Patience you need patience.

Q's solutions will also help with the Desktop refreshing it icons issue. Don't map shared drives and resources unless you really need it.

Solution 1 get a faster network CAT5e is my usual preference. 100BaseT or 1000BaseT.
Bring all you docs and files onto one system and share that folder and sub folders for typical users with your other clients in your network... allows you for easily backup those files. etc....

Zorbtion