OT: Cool! I FINALLY figured out why my system took so long to boot

riredale wrote on 6/28/2004, 5:16 PM
I'm kind of a pack rat. I run Vegas on my main PC, which is an XPpro AMD 2100 system (homebuilt) with 512MB of memory and close to 1TB of hard drive capacity hanging off it. My PC has about 50 processes running, so it's a very busy place in there.

One source of frustration over the past year has been that, on those rare occasions when I reboot, the PC seems to load everything quickly--to a point. I run a little applet in the System Tray called "ABP monitor" which gives me a moving graph of CPU load, updated once a second. Partway through the boot (after the desktop is displayed and many of the System Tray icons are present) the CPU load goes to 100% and stays there for nearly a minute. I finally know when the system is fully booted when the graph falls to zero (okay, actually about 2%).

Today I came across a web site that talks about the Icon Cache. It says that if this cache overflows, the system has to rebuild it, and icons can be corrupted. I'd had this problem on some programs. Anyway, the writer has created a neat little reg file that you can run which puts a user-selectable icon cache radio button on one of the XP menus. I installed it, increased my cache to 8,192 icons, and pow!--no more long boots.

I have a warm fuzzy feeling for my PC again.

Comments

epirb wrote on 6/28/2004, 6:22 PM
hummm checked it out . strange I have windows xp home edition and under that registry key I have no Icon Cache string.
craftech wrote on 6/28/2004, 6:22 PM
Riredale: From that website you posted:
"I will show you how to add an Increase Icon cache option to your Advanced Settings in Folder Options in Windows 9x and WinXP, so that increasing your icon cache becomes a simple matter of selecting your choice for the amount of cache you want assigned to your icons."

"Step One
Go to this key:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Advanced\IconCache]
In the right hand pane, you should have these values and data........etc."

I am running Windows 98SE and that key does not exist. In fact, when I searched the registry for "IconCache" nothing turns up.
Perhaps the author is mistaken in recommending it for Windows 9x. Thanks for the tip though.

John
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/28/2004, 7:13 PM
Same here for Win2k (but it doesn't list that as one of the OS's, but should work?)

I wanna type all this stuff in & see what happens, but if it doesn't work could I boot my comp info safe mode still? anyone know (I have the simular "windows sits there for ever" thing too. :) )
riredale wrote on 6/28/2004, 9:37 PM
I've spent enough time messing around with the Registries of w98se to know a thing or two about really screwing things up. I have no idea about whether this fellow's tweak works on any OS other than XP, which I have here.

I took one look at the multiple operations one had to do and almost clicked on, but then I noticed the statement that he had a reg file ready for immediate use over on the message board he references. Since I was already a member of the SoCal Vegas board, it only took a few seconds to get signed up for this new board, and after searching through the hundreds of file tweaks he had posted, I found the one he referenced. Just a click on the reg file and it was installed.

Now when I open any folder and go to tools/Folder options, there is an additional listing that lets one set the icon cache to 1024, 2048, 4096, or 8192.
briang wrote on 6/29/2004, 2:27 AM
I have been experiencing similar problems as Riredal ie, long boot times on my Pentium 4 2.8Ghz/XP Professional, 500MB Ram.

Downloaded and installed the recommended registry file.

Now shows the four cache options for icons as described by Riredale.

I checked the largest cache option.

Sadly, no improvement for me.

Brian
Bobpin wrote on 6/29/2004, 3:30 AM
Riredale,

Could you piont me to where you found "ABP monitor" please. I tried Google .no luck


Bob
riredale wrote on 6/29/2004, 10:51 AM
You can get it here.

There are probably other utilities that can do something similar. I really like it because it's just a tiny little green bar graph that sits in the System Tray and shows in real-time how hard the processor is working.
craftech wrote on 6/29/2004, 8:02 PM
OK. You can enter everything manually including your own IconCache key since itdoesn;t appear in W98SE by default. Once you have entered everything it says to add the options do show under folder options/view
I imagine it would work if you manually entered it into the registry of Windows 2000 as well.
Just one problem: If I choose any other value besides 2048 and click "Apply", it goes right back to 2048. It won't let me keep one of the other settings for some reason.

John