Speed up login time for OS X Leopard
Posted on 23. Jun, 2009 by John in Technology
To decrease the amount of time it takes to login to Windows XP, Vista and Mac OS X Leopard try the following house cleaning tip. It will make a bigger difference the more (in size) that you have on your desktop.
For XP or Vista … In OS X make a folder on the main local drive (usually C:). For OS X the concept is exactly the same. in your Documents folder by right clicking and choosing New Folder.
Name it something like Desktop Bag or Drawer or anything else you like.
Put a shortcut of this folder on your desktop. Right click on the folder you just created and choose Make Alias.
Now put this folder ALIAS on your desktop and move all of the files and folders into it. This will still give you quick access to the files, but they will be located in your Documents folder, not your Desktop folder.
Put all of the files or folders (no need to move shortcuts) on the desktop into this new folder. I named my folder “Desktop Drawer” since that’s kind of the idea.
If you had a lot (1GB or more) of files/folders located on the desktop you should see a noticeable difference in the amount of time it takes your computer, Windows or Mac to login.
And thanks for your comment below WingedPanther.
7 Responses to “Speed up login time for OS X Leopard”
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06. Jul, 2009
[...] immediately reminded me of a post John Columbo made here. Removing the shortcut to a networked drive from my desktop resolved the issue. icons, microsoft, [...]
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23. Jun, 2009
New blog post: Speed up login time for Windows Vista, XP and OS X http://bit.ly/Js0IS
johncolumbo
04. Jul, 2009
nice Jordan! When searching for an answer for WingedPanther (above) I did find articles about shortcuts to network drives causing the slowdown issue. I believe one of the articles was even on the Microsoft site.
Jordan DeLozier
03. Jul, 2009
I'm releasing a blog post on Monday which talks about your post here. Instead of just icons, place a shortcut to a networked drive on your desktop. You'll notice a considerable slowdown. In particular, I placed a link to my D-LINK NAS which needs to spin up if it hasn't been used for a while (it goes to sleep). When I logged in after creating that shortcut I actually heard it spinning up and had to wait for a connection to be made before any icons would load on my desktop.
johncolumbo
03. Jul, 2009
This post on Apple.com http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID... points out that each file on the desktop is treated like its own window, therefore using up resources which would slow down login time.
As for Windows, I found that this is a very opinionated subject. Good question WingedPanther!
I found the following fairly interesting articles supporting it and plenty of stuff saying it's a myth.
http://www.speedupcomputer.com/fixing-your-pc/spe...
http://eforum.reviewjournal.com/lv/showthread.php...
http://windows.about.com/od/tipsandadvice/qt/clea...
I did find this article that talked about myths for speeding up your Windows based machine, which did not mention this subject at all http://lifehacker.com/5033518/debunking-common-wi... which is interesting since it is talked about quite a bit.
I just tested my theory out again in Windows XP by timing my login with just shortcuts on the desktop and then with 1.3 GB of files on the desktop (6 files total) and there was no slow down. Then I tested to see if it was just the amount of files, so I copied a 1KB text file 50 times, but still no difference.
Hmm, I am sure I saw a performance increase using my Windows Vista Dell before I posted this. I did the tests above using my VMWare session on my Mac running Windows XP SP3.
Oh well, I believe you may have officially DEBUNKED ME on that one WP. I've updated the post accordingly.
johncolumbo
03. Jul, 2009
This post on Apple.com http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID... points out that each file on the desktop is treated like its own window, therefore using up resources which would slow down login time.
As for Windows, I found that this is a very opinionated subject. Good question WingedPanther!
I found the following fairly interesting articles supporting it and plenty of stuff saying it's a myth.
http://www.speedupcomputer.com/fixing-your-pc/spe...
http://eforum.reviewjournal.com/lv/showthread.php...
http://windows.about.com/od/tipsandadvice/qt/clea...
I did find this article that talked about myths for speeding up your Windows based machine, which did not mention this subject at all http://lifehacker.com/5033518/debunking-common-wi... which is interesting since it is talked about quite a bit.
I just tested my theory out again in Windows XP by timing my login with just shortcuts on the desktop and then with 1.3 GB of files on the desktop (6 files total) and there was no slow down. Then I tested to see if it was just the amount of files, so I copied a 1KB text file 50 times, but still no difference.
Hmm, I am sure I saw a performance increase using my Windows Vista Dell before I posted this. I did the tests above using my VMWare session on my Mac running Windows XP SP3.
Oh well, I believe you may have officially DEBUNKED ME on that one WP. I've updated the post accordingly.
WingedPanther
03. Jul, 2009
Any explanation of why this works? I wouldn't think the OS needs to monkey with that information.