desktop problem

[Kurachi]

if i dont show my desktop for an amount of time, my icons will disappear, but when i show my desktop, it has to load all icons, and that takes a while, and slows down my pc

is there any way i can turn it on/off so that it wont "hide" those icons?

if you wanna know about my pc, its an oldy, lol, and uses Windows XP

[sponge]

if it takes that much time to load up all your desktop items, i think more importantly you should delete some desktop items. for lesser used program shortcuts the taskbar or start menu is more appropriate. for things that arent program shortcuts you should just organize your files somehow.

but try this.

right click desktop

arrange icons by

show desktop items -> check

[Yossarian]

Originally Posted by sponge

if it takes that much time to load up all your desktop items, i think more importantly you should delete some desktop items. for lesser used program shortcuts the taskbar or start menu is more appropriate. for things that arent program shortcuts you should just organize your files somehow.

but try this.

right click desktop

arrange icons by

show desktop items -> check

Neat! I never knew that before. That's pretty useful as I use my desktop as a generic dumping ground for everything.

Another thing that may be helpful is to go to the Control Panel and select Add/Remove programs.

Sort by frequency of use and then have a clean out of the programs that you no longer use or haven't used in a while and are unlikely to in the future. Don't go nuts and if you're not sure, leave it.

[RetroNL]

Defragging the com once in a while can be improving as well. So do it when you are done cleaning and organising .

[kawaiipikachu]

Format drive C then install Linux .
Unbuntu seams to be the flavour these days .

[Jogurt the Yogurt]

Originally Posted by kawaiipikachu

Format drive C then install Linux .
Unbuntu seams to be the flavour these days .

Is "Seams" a new Ubuntu build? I haven't heard of it.

[Spore]

Originally Posted by kawaiipikachu

Format drive C then install Linux .
Unbuntu seams to be the flavour these days .

I don't know why, but you seem like the last person who would support Linux.

[PoisonRamune]

Originally Posted by Jogurt the Yogurt

Is "Seams" a new Ubuntu build? I haven't heard of it.

Ubuntu Seams

[kawaiipikachu]

Originally Posted by PoisonRamune

Ubuntu Seams

A manga about 3 Ubuntu fangirls .
Um allright okay *scratches head*

[Joxe]

Unfortunately this is rather common for Windows to have this very problem, when it comes to slow loading icons it's simply defragment your main drive and remove some of the icons, just placing them inside folders will suffice. I'm rather used to just "throw things at the desktop" when I'm downloading and saving stuff that I currently work with, I guess it's a habit I got from Linux, but I also try to tidy things up whenever it becomes two-three lines with icons. Think it's a lot worse in XP than in W7 though.

And just for the record, switching to Linux won't really help if you still keep the same amount of icons on the desktop, it's just that the desktop is the first folder where you place all your stuff whenever you download or save files. If you care enough you can use 2-5 seconds to simply put it in another folder.

[Kurachi]

its not like i just put anything on desktop, i only put shortcuts there
i guess its just a windows problem then

what i meant with all my icons, are the shortcuts, just shortcuts of programs, not just anything i get, like some do :S

its only once a day, so if i let them load early, i dont need to wait to turn off my pc at night

i have this problem for a long time, so its not new, but i thought: lets see what people here know about it, maybe somehow i can get rid of it

[LinkFanatic]

Desktop items take a lot of RAM, so I have no more than 4 icons on my desktop at one time. I have no issues for going to the start menu to open my apps.

[Jogurt the Yogurt]

I'm a bit out of the Windows loops, but isn't there some option to turn "active" desktop items off so they don't eat RAM?

[Joxe]

Think that is an old problem that appeared in Windows ME, I just know that it was disabled every time Windows crashed (which in ME's case was every 10 minutes).

One neat little feature I have is that I have gathered all my icons for games in a handy little pop-up menu in the bottom right corner of the task bar.


This will simply hide all the icons in there instead of having them all on your desktop and it's not really a lot more time consuming to click that menu instead of using your desktop.



Just create a folder anywhere on your computer and add it as a new...toolbar (I think, Swedish language on my OS) and you should easily be able to fill it up with all your icons.

[RetroNL]

Originally Posted by Kurachi

its not like i just put anything on desktop, i only put shortcuts there
i guess its just a windows problem then

what i meant with all my icons, are the shortcuts, just shortcuts of programs, not just anything i get, like some do :S

its only once a day, so if i let them load early, i dont need to wait to turn off my pc at night

i have this problem for a long time, so its not new, but i thought: lets see what people here know about it, maybe somehow i can get rid of it

Its more wisely to only put shortcuts of main or most used programs on your desktop like your internet browser(s), media player etc. Im mostly around 10 on my desktop.
And like I said dont forget to defrag your com once in a while, in Vista this is mostly set on automatic if you never changed the feature, in XP you will have to do this through your ? systemworkshop ? (bureau accesoires/ systeemwerkset in start menu for instance) You only have to do that once in a while (not weekly)

Organising is also very important not only for your com but also for yourself, try to do that with the right click options of your mouse. I know you are dutch so it would be the 'pictogrammen schikken op' feature.
Good luck.

[Joxe]

When it comes to defragging, Window's defragger is rather useless, I personally use JKDefrag.

[LinkFanatic]

Originally Posted by Joxe

When it comes to defragging, Window's defragger is rather useless, I personally use JKDefrag.

Although it still does the job

[Joxe]

Of course better than nothing, but for some reason Microsoft haven't really put a lot of time into their defragger.

[Kurachi]

a friend of mine has it too i saw, but his pc is way faster, so were loaded in no time

for me it causes lagging, well, i guess i cant do much against it, it seems

[Joxe]

Well, the entire thread has given you plenty of tips to at least minimize the problem, you can't remove the problem all together due to how Windows XP works but you can at least make it into a very minor problem.