Anonymous wrote:
MM,
yes, I did that some time ago. I have copied and pasted the procedure
below for anyone who is interested. I set my "Max Cached Icons" to the
maximum years ago, which is supposed to be 2000. I will delete my
ShellIconCache file and see what happens. Since I did upgrade from FE
to SE, maybe there was some kind of corruption. If this isn't the
solution, it'll probably be some time before I track down the problem.
I can't believe SE is so much slower in Explorer and booting than FE. I
might even need to call Microsoft and pay $50 for their support but
let's hope it doesn't come to this.


From "Tweaking your Windows Registry"
http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/registry/print.shtml
===========================================
Icon cache

Windows stores Icons it displays in a cache file called ShellIconCache.
This allows icons to appear quickly, as Windows doesn’t have to load the
icons from programs that contain them. However, by default the cache
holds 512 icons. Once the cache is full Windows it gets destroyed &
begins again. When this happens desktop activity slows to a crawl & the
desktop will most likely redraw. Increasing the Icon Cache size will
decrease the amount of times this may happen in a session.

Open this key
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Explorer].
Add a New string value entitled Max Cached Icons. The default value is
512. You should increase this value. I’d recommend doubling it to 1024.
The maximum value for this is 2000 & minimum is 100 according to Microsoft.
===========================================



Ok,

Sorry it didn't help. A few notes on the procedure above:

I had to create the reg key and add the string value in every instance.

The notes I have mention the value needs to be 512, 1024, 2048, or 4096;
and if you like 8192. Seems there was some banter on which number was
the actual maximum. 4096 seemed to be a popular suggestion, though many
swore 8192 worked also. So, I went for the biggest number, 8192. All is
well on all the machines I altered. Not to say that 4096 wouldn't have
produced the same results.

I did dump & rebuild the ShellIconCache file first, but I don't know if
it really matters which one you do first.

As far as SE booting slower than FE, I never really noticed. Although,
it has been a long time since I've even seen an FE box.

Does it happen when booting into safe mode too? Maybe it's just a built
in thing. In my experiences with XP, it is a lot slower booting and
shutting down than 98SE. I also understand it supposed to be that way,
though the exact reasons escape me.

MM