Number of icons on Desktop

Can I please ask my learned friends if the number of icons on the Desktop affects the loading time ?

I have a lot as you can see by my screenshot and it does take a while for the system to load up.

Secondly, if I put all the icons which are not used often in a special folder still shown on the Desktop, will it improve the loading time ?

Your ever loyal JB

 

it should not imho, unless linked to network drives. visual effects are more on the performance side, such as large and high resolution backgrounds, desktop gadgets/widgets, etc. and of course any startup drivers, services and programs added to the core functionality of the OS

 

Hi John

Windows has to write all those icons when it loads the desktop, so putting them all in a single folder might be very, very marginally better - have you tried that and observed any difference in time to workable desktop?

I imagine Windows takes rather more time to write your desktop background though....

philby

 

Thank you so much for replying to a piffling little question.
I will put all the "unused" icons in a folder which will be on my Desktop, rather like the other folders. Your comments seem to suggest it may help. If it does no good, it will not do any harm and will tidy up my Desktop from being cluttered.

The Background ? Well, I guess it has to stay as a tribute to my beautiful Rottie Kaiser who I absolutely adore and love to see that image every time I log on to my PC.

John

 

Nothing wrong with that - some things are far more important than PC speed!

As vtol said, if time to desktop is not good, it might be worth having a peek at msconfig, services.msc and/or Autoruns to see what's starting up...

philby

 

I agree with philby - minimize your start-up programs and processes to minimize boot-time.

My own system boots with only security apps running, and some services have been set to Manual or Disabled. Be careful about what services you modify, and if in doubt, setting services to Manual is a bit safer than Disabled. Research/Google a bit for advice on modifying services.

Online Armor is an excellent FW/HIPS, but note that my system boots noticeably faster since I switched from OA to PrivateFirewall.

Hope this helps!

 

Nice dog there. Yours?

I limit my icons to web browsers I use and my main programs. The rest are pinned in Star Menu or Quick Luanch. Just 6 of them. My experience for loading a bit faster than when I had around 20 of them hanging around. Much slower when I was using OA Premium.

 

I keep the vast majority of my desktop shortcut-icons organized into desktop folders, but that's just to keep the desktop relatively clean rather than for any (probably little or no) performance gain.

 

I create this
%appdata%\roaming\microsoft\internet explorer\quick launch
I make it a toolbar on the taskbar (just recreating the old XP quick launch)

I then create subdirectories, something like
Coding
Media
Utils
System
Web

in the root of quick launch directory I always place [show desktop, notepad, wordpad, explorer and cmd].. these always show in the quick launch then. I resize the taskbar so that only those items display in quick lauch area. The end result is that I have 5 SMALL icons down by the windows start button, and a little double arrow that when clicked, expands those directores. Then, much like the standard start menu, I hover over a sub-directory, like Web, which expands and lets me choose an alternate browser.

I put all the commonly used windows tools or other tools into these directories. If I use a program a lot, like Chromium or Qdir, it has a desktop shortcut. Things I only use occassionaly or rarely go into the quick launch area.

In this manner I use my desktop as my 'workspace'. I download something to the downloads directory but if I want to mess with it, I move/copy it to my desktop. When I am done messing, I archive the objects if I wish to keep them or delete them.

For those who like a clean desktop, it might be an option, or for those who just like to see thier background

I have no idea if it is any faster, but it is organized

Sul.

 

Faster ? Maybe or maybe not, but what a superb and professional way to organise the Desktop. I doubt if I can handle it, but to other readers it looks a very attractive prospect.

One fascinating point about a Sully post is that it always offers a highly technical and very positive contribution to any subject he chooses to respond to.

Thanks
John

PS - I have gone for the Folder option. No benefit regarding loading time, but much more tidy. Also, it gives the dog a break.