Favorites Slow to Appear on Start Menu

For as long as I can remember, the Favorites/MyPictures/MyMusic items take up to an hour to appear above My Computer icon on the Windows XP Start Menu.

If I open up Windows Explorer in a window (not full screen) and navigate to the Favorites folder and re-sort the items, the desktop icons also momentarily flash and redraw themselves. The Favorites and other missing icons are then available in the Start Menu.

Does anyone know why this happens, and is there some kind of fix or simple workaround to get the Start Menu properly populated at Login?

 

Derek G - no idea what would cause that sort of delay. Are you having any other performance issues?

But if you regularly visit those two locations, why not put a shortcut to each of them in your quick launch section so you can always see them and only need to do a single click to get to either one.

All you have to do is create a desktop shortcut and then drag it to the quick launch area. After that you can delete the desktop shortcut.

 

You might also try finding and deleting iconcache.db. This file grows quite large on some systems for reasons unknown. You may experience some short-term delays in displaying icons until the cache is rebuilt.

Increasing the default size of the icon cache also seems to speed the opening of any folder:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs_edits/iconcache.vbs

(You may receive a warning or be unable to run this vbs script unless anti-virus is disabled).

Another possibility is that you have these set to expand by default, showing the contents of the folder. This means that each folder needs to be scanned each time. You can change this to unexpanded in your Tasbar and Start Menu Options in the Control Panel (Start Menu tab, Customize button).

 

Abraxas - I eventually found the iconcache.db file, but removing it did not make any difference. Increasing the icon cache size had no effect either (although Kellys Korner is a great MVP site). I take your point about the expaning overhead, but when the word "Favorites" is completely missing from just above My Computer on the Start Menu, there is nothing to kick start.

Newt - Thanks for the suggestion of utilising the quick launch, it seems the most obvious workaround, especially if there is not a readily available fix. I actually chose to make it a Toolbar on the TaskBar so that the nested folder expend as they would on the Start Menu.

I appreciate both of your help on this.

 

I had the same problem at one time in Win98.

I found it to be Video realted.

Changing the video settings back to Standard VGA and restarting a couple of times and then re-installing video drivers fixed it.

And this may take more than a one time effort as it may not work with one set of drivers but will with another.

But setting back to standard VGA inbetween is better to do.

the desktop icons also momentarily flash and redraw themselves

I believe this also indicates a Video problem.

BillyBob

 

A laborious process that may not help, but if the Favorites seems to be the problem, try exporting and deleting them to see if the problem disappears. If it does, maybe one of the Favorites shortcuts is faulty or in an unusual form.

Does it improve if you choose not to show Favorites on the Start Menu?