W7 taskbar>toolbar>'desktop' extremely slow

[MilesAhead]

I haven't played around with hidden icons. But I know there's an icon cache.  Also there's a registry setting that would allow you to increase the cache. It could be that if the icons are hidden they are not cached. But that's just conjecture on my part.

I know there's a tutorial on Windows Seven forum to increase the icon cache. Someone there should know about the hidden desktop icons. You may want to try the Customization subforum. Many of the customizers have had a lot of experience with explorer, desktop and limitations of the system. As example just changing the background color of the Explorer window is not trivial. One of the guys there made me an Aero Theme just to do it(I set the background Antique White to get rid of the "glare" when contrasted with the black desktop background used with fractal flames.)

[tomos]

This makes me think that the delay I have complained about, only was caused by Windows waiting for the 65 icons to display, so to speak. Meaning, Windows would first take (a lot of) time to load the icons, and only then display them in the menu.

-Curt (April 23, 2012, 04:15 PM)

I dont think that's it - I have seen windows really struggling with desktop shortcuts, but I think it depends on the shortcuts (as opposed to the icons).
Earlier I created shortcuts from a "GodMode" folder, similar to as suggested here, the shortcuts were made on the desktop so I had tried the toolbar >Desktop - more or less instant display with 278 shortcuts/icons on the desktop...


EDIT/ I see you've edited ;-) ---> ---> if I make them all hidden, they just dont show
So,
I still think it's to do with the shortcuts - but presumably more to do with how windows reads them - I mean if TLB has no problems with them...


Win 7 64bit

[Daikeez]

Made an account just to post here 

I've got the same problem. Added a new toolbar, choosing my shortcuts folder, which is just a folder on C:\ . So far, I've only got 25 shortcuts in there, but like Curt's problem it takes a solid 12-15 seconds to pull up the toolbar the first time its used, or sometimes after waking from sleep. It's not that big of a hassle, just that I'm kinda stumped. And I've tried pulling everything but one or two cuts out of the folder, and it still loads slow.

Also tried MSConfig, and am confident that my AV isn't the problem. None of the shortcuts are hidden, and this is a fairly new wipe of Win 7 x64 (1 month or so) on Acer Aspire 7741G.

Maybe its something simple. Hopefully. Well, it could happen

[Curt]

I never figured out why or what. But the problem "went away" when I moved almost all the icons from the desktop into True Launch Bar edited and disabled the desktop toolbar.

[dr_andus]

SE-TrayMenu (free) is another option (I've been using it happily on Win7, 64-bit).

[Daikeez]

Awesome, will give it a try. Though my OCD will probably keep gnawing away inside me, taunting me that I 'gave in' and didn't find the problem. Oh well, maybe one day it'll just work.

That would probably just drive me crazy // this line is for the computer gods, in an attempt to use reverse psychology
// because we all know computer gods can't read comments

[tomos]

I dont use it myself but think Launchbar Commander from mouser here (donationcoder) does the same thing as the other suggestions.

Re Windows 7 64 bit, I guess if I tell you that adding a folder as toolbar on the taskbar works perfectly here, I'll only be rubbing salt in the wounds...

[Curt]

lemon-juice...

 
---------
It is my theory that Explorer is testing each icon's program's address, before displaying the desktop (in the toolbar in question). When I moved all third-party icons and only kept the system-made such, my toolbar became lightening fast (of course, it had almost nothing to do). But the difference in speed reminded me so much of the difference between launching Add/Remove with only 5 programs installed, and launching Add/Remove when 500 programs are installed => same-same.

I no longer use the taskbar toolbar, but I managed to find it for this occasion:

Danish titles, etc., (Skrivebord is desktop):



Loading time: too short to calculate.  
   now I will put it away again.

[ent]

Another possibility:


It is my experience that it only gets slow when the harddrive(s) goes to sleep.

My powersaving options let my harddrives go to sleep if they aren't accessed for a few hours.

The delay for the toolbar pop up appears to be the 15-20 seconds it takes for the harddrive to wind-up again.  If you catch it around the 20 second period, you can actually see it re-reading each individual thumbnail from the drive, as if it is scanning individual executables for their icons.  I don't see any caching occurring except what it pulls into active memory.

I haven't tested it yet, but it may actually need to wake up each individual drive that any menu shortcuts are pointing to.  Once I can read one toolbar menu, the others only have a 1-2 second delay.  After that, they all respond in less than a second.


Seems like this would be a major oversight for any OS GUI, but then again Windows has proven they don't design things for continued usage.  They still don't have a simple icon for "Upgrade your harddrive".