Source: robichaux.net
Speed up Vista Explorer
A great tip from my friend Liam Colvin:
I don’t know if you’re like me but I was experiencing slowness (like a 20-30 second delay) when opening an Explorer window to view files. You might have found this before me, but it took me some time fiddling with settings to figure it out. I was trying all the usual ways to determine what was causing the delay in opening the explorer window: anti-virus, explorer extensions, etc – and nothing worked, very frustrating. I looked extensively internally and searched the Internet, and the best I could find were issues with copying files down from servers causing delays due to SMB issues (there is a hotfix out there for that, by the way – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931770/en-us). I finally found it after carefully reviewing the behavior of Explorer when it opened by monitoring the Explorer process with Filemon. I noticed that when Explorer went to open a folder (from a shortcut, for example), it parsed all the files in the root of the directory. Urk! This clearly took a long time. I looked at the Folder Options under Control Panel and noticed the very first setting under the View tab: Always show Icons, never Thumbnails. It was not checked. I realized that Vista must read each file when opening the folder for a thumbnail and/or creates one. When I checked the Always show Icons, never Thumbnails, it reduced the time required to open each folder to 3 or 4 seconds.
Posted by Paul at May 04, 2007 04:50 PM
Source: TechRepublic
by Greg Shultz
Takeaway:
Windows XP’s Prefetch folder stores information about each program you launch; then, on subsequent restarts, XP uses the information in the folder to preload parts of those programs at boot time. Find out why you need to clean out the Prefetch folder periodically to keep boot times from dragging.
One of Microsoft’s big selling points for Windows XP was that it loads applications much faster than its predecessors. To accomplish this feat, Windows XP uses what is called the “Prefetch technique,” in which the operating system gathers information about each program that you launch and stores that information in the \Windows\Prefetch folder. Then on subsequent restarts, Windows XP uses the information in the Prefetch folder to essentially preload parts of those programs at boot time. Thus, when you launch your application, it appears to load really fast.
However, the Prefetch folder can accumulate too much information over time. This makes the operating system so busy loading bits and pieces of lots of applications into memory that it ends up slowing down the boot process. Fortunately, you can clean out the Prefetch folder at any time. Follow these four steps:
- Access the Run dialog box by pressing [Windows]R.
- Type Prefetch in the Open text box and click OK.
- Press [Ctrl]A to select all the files.
- Press [Delete].
As you use your system, Windows XP will rebuild the contents of the Prefetch folder.
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