Preload a folder into memory in the background at startup?

Hi, I'm new to the forums here. I've posted this question elsewhere but have received no responses. Can anyone here help me out?

I'm wondering if it's possible to preload all the .ico's in my my music folder in the background when starting up Windows. I was thinking maybe a .bat file loaded into my startup file, but I don't really know much about .bat files, how to write one, or if that's really a solution. If possible, I'd like for the folder not to actually open.

I tried putting a shortcut to my music folder in the Startup directory, but this had two problems: 1) the folder opened, of course and 2) it only loaded the icons for the visible folders (meaning it wouldn't scroll down to load the rest).

I can manually open the folder, scroll down slowly while I wait for each folder to load its .ico file and then close and re-open the folder and it loads blazingly fast (because it's already in memory by that point). This is how I want it to be every time I open it.

All of my albums each have their own folder in one music folder (no sub-folders broken down by artists), which is the way I want it. Every folder/album has it's own Folder.ico (note: not .jpg) file associated with it that displays the album art instead of the generic Windows folder icon. I don't want to use the Folder.jpg's because Windows Vista/7/8 skews the artwork.

Is what I'm wanting possible? Thanks!

[By the way, I'm wanting this for three computers: 1 running Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit), 1 running Windows 7 Pro (64-bit), and one running Windows 8.1 Pro (64-bit).]

 

How to Change the Icon Cache Size in Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8

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SpywareDr:

Thank you for your reply. I got really excited at first because I had never heard of the icon cache before (thumbs.db for the .jpg's, yes, but not the icon cache). Unfortunately, even with setting the "Max Cached Icons" string to 800000 (KB), I observed no difference in performance loading the .ico's.

Any other ideas?

 

Which CPU and how much RAM are you running?

Are you running a SSD instead of a hard drive?

 

I tested this on the Media Center computer:
PC Alchemy Avideus NXE, Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit, Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, 4GB RAM @ 800MHz, NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS, 80GB @ 7200 RPM OS drive, 1.5TB @ 7200 RPM RAID 5 (750GB x 3) storage drive (the music is on this drive)

For future reference, my home computer:
Apple iMac (Late 2012), Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit, Intel Core i7-3770, 24GB RAM @ 1600Mhz, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX, 768GB SSD (OS & Storage)

And my work computer:
Polywell Z6800x, Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, Intel Core i7-2600K, 16GB RAM @ 1333GHz, AMD FirePro V4900, 128GB SSD OS drive, 500GB @ 7200 RPM storage drive (the music is on this drive).

 

800,000! I believe the maximum is 8,192.

Once you get that changed, delete the IconCache.db (hidden) file in "C:\Users\your_username\AppData\Local" (hidden folders) and reboot. Then give Windows a while to rebuild the icon cache.

That "work computer" should be fast enough. The problem may be that it's having to wait for that old, slow spinner of a hard drive.

 

I currently have 1,860 albums in my music library, each with it's own album art icon. At about 425KB each, I end up with almost 800,000KB worth of icons. Even on my fast SSD on my home computer, it takes a while to load them initially. Once it's in memory, though, it's super fast for all of the computers. That's why I was hoping to find a way of having Windows load it into memory automatically at startup. I have plenty of memory on at least my home and work computers so I'm not worried about an extra GB being taken up there (which is essentially how much more my explorer.exe process uses once the files have been loaded).

Anyway, I'll try your suggestion of setting it to 8,192 and deleting the IconCache.db file and will report back. Thanks again for working with me on this.

 

I deleted the IconCache.db file which, interestingly, was 14.3MB. After I changed the registry value to 8,192, the file is 21.7MB. I thought I was setting the limit to 8MB?

Regardless, even after loading the folder completely and restarting a couple of times (reloading each time), it still did not seem to help much, if at all. Nothing is as fast as when it is in memory.

 

Hmmm... Download, install and run CCleaner, then give Windows a couple of minutes to rebuild the deleted thumbcache*.db files.

 

Running CCleaner will not be an option for me. I don't want to risk messing up my registry running that. Besides, my issue happens on clean installs as well. It always happens because it just takes a long time to load nearly a gig of icons. That's why I want to have a process that automatically loads them into my fast memory in the background at startup.

 

No, I didn't mean to run the "registry cleaner" part of CCleaner. The default settings are safe and will delete all of the Windows thumbcache*.db files for you.

 

Won't a clean install delete all the thumbcache files for me as well?

I just did a clean install on my work computer last week. It's the same as when I set up all the computers originally and the same as they all are now.

 

I'm fresh out of ideas then. I have roughly 500-600 albums here and don't see any delay.

Hopefully someone else with another idea ot two will be along soon ...

 

SpywareDr:

I appreciate you taking the time to try to help me. Yes, hopefully someone with (.bat file programming experience???) will come along!

Just out of curiosity, are you using the default .jpg-based folder icons or have you customized yours with .ico's as I have? The .jpg's for me load instantly as well, but don't look good. With the .ico's, I have something that looks perfect and uniform across XP-8.1. Originally, if Vista/7/8 had kept XP's head-on style I probably wouldn't have tried to find this work-around using .ico's.

 

I rather doubt a .bat file will solve the problem.

The folder icons here are a mix of both .jpg and .ico's. (Wife messes with them).

 

Heh heh, I make the shared directory read-only so my wife can't accidentally mess around with anything. ; )

 

Around here it's unhappy wife = unhappy life.