Having to wait for icons.

[boxfish]

I'm using Windows XP. Sometimes when I log on to my user, the icons on my desktop will appear as soon as the blue "Loading your personal settings" screen is done and I can start running programs right away, but most of the time I have to wait a long time before they appear, and if I try running programs before they do, I usually freeze up my computer. I get an error message that says something like "Windows could not locate My Documents. Try selecting Search from the start menu." I don't remember exactly what it says. If I open the Task Manager and take a look at the processes before I get icons on my desktop, Explorer.exe is has High priority, and when I get icons, it goes down to Normal. I can sometimes make the icons appear by changing Explorer.exe's priority to Normal manually, but it doesn't always work. Does anyone know why this might be happening? Thanks.

[DonRayner]

Google is your friend

A quick check on google found the following

A quick thing to try - change your desktop color depth from 32 bit to 16
bit, apply changes and then change it back again. (Display properties /
Settings / Color quality). This should cause it to rebuild the icon cache,
and sometimes this fixes slow loading of the desktop icons.

or

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5164407.html

or

Try #121 on the left: "Increase Icon Cache" at

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

[boxfish]

Thank you. I should have googled it. I changed the desktop color depth to 16 and back and the waiting time is now less than 10 seconds. This might also explain why Windows Explorer wasn't detecting changes to icons I had edited. I haven't tried changing the icon cache size, but it's very good to know.
Thanks.

[boxfish]

Update:
I just upgraded from Norton Antivirus 2008 to 2009, and now I never have to wait at all. I think this problem started when I installed Norton Antivirus 2008. Hmm.