General Windows erformance problem

Soldato
Joined
1 Dec 2002
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Cornwall
Right ok, not my PC for a change, but that of my Dad's. Quite honestly he's drivng me nuts with this problem and I'm about to tell him where to shove his PC because I really don't care either, but no poor old me, on my day off work tomorrow I have to sit there and try and sort it out.

Basically he's moaning that icons are building up on the screen, when windows boots up it like builds them up, when in his words "They should be displayed instantly" I will point out he has a short cut to just about everything on his desktop, and a very large desktop wallpaper of something from his camera, which I don't think has been compressed down which in my mind is causing the problem with the slow loading times. But no, aparantly the older and wiser head disagrees.

He's got a half decent machine, Athlon 64 3200, gig of ram, Radeon X 800 GT (PcI Express) and he says that ever since that card has gone in (he took out a Radeon X550) he reckons that the X550 is a much better card than the X800 (go figure) What annoys me is the fact that when I upgraded my machine he upgraded his, as if he didn't want to be out done. He doesn't play games that require a fast card, only ever seen him play Flight Sim 2000.

My PC, exactly the same spec, apart from the motherboard is near enough instantanious. To be honest I've never really taken much notice of how fast Windows loads icons, either on the desktop or in Control Panel (another area which he says that they take a while to build up)

I also pointed out that he really should have done a clean install of XP when he dropped the new card in. his install of Windows is 4 months or so old.

I had him run defrag, aparantly that made no difference, and neither did disabling undeed programs from starting up (yahoo messenger, MSN messenger among others)

I personally can't see the problem, yeah sure if it was taking 5 minutes to load things up then sure I'd be more keen to help. Like I said I really couldn't care less about this problem But of course I have to help because I just want him to stop moaning.

Please guys, help before he makes me insane !!
 
Have you tried re-installing graphics drivers? Or did you just plonk the new card in?

I've never had a problem with putting a new graphics card in as long as I remove old drivers and start again.
 
He did just stick the new card in, I told him he should have taken the drivers out, then re-installed them from the computer being in standard VGA mode. He said hes done that and put the latest catalyst drivers in and thats made no difference.

He's just come in and announced that my Celeron 2.5 out in the garage with the X550 in loads icons up faster than his Athlon 64 rig.

I've got a spare IDE HDD here so am going to put that in his PC with a clean install of Windows on and see how that goes, am hoping thats going to sort it out.
 
Behemoth, it sounds like it may just be a case of the icon cache is full.

A work around is navigate to here, making sure "Show hidden files or folders" is enabled in your folders view options:

C:\Documents and Settings\"User Name"\Local Settings\Application Data

You will have a hidden file called IconCache.db. Just delete it and restart your dads pc. The first time the icons load they may be slow as the cache will start to rebuild again, but it should be quicker after that.

If you're confident about editing the registry, you can increase the size of the icon cache. I found this article on what to do http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035_11-5164407.html

HTH, dagwoood.
 
Thanks dogwood, will give that a try shortly. I've just sat there and used it for the last half an hour or so and to be honest didn't think that the problem was much of a big deal.
 
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