Comments on: Speed up login time for OS X Leopard

By: Shortcuts to Network Drives on Desktop Slows Down Vista Login | Jordan's Technology Blog

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:35:54 +0000

[...] 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, [...]

By: johncolumbo

johncolumbo — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:48:02 +0000

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.

By: Jordan DeLozier

Jordan DeLozier — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:40:07 +0000

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.

By: johncolumbo

johncolumbo — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:07:10 +0000

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.

By: johncolumbo

johncolumbo — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:07:10 +0000

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.

By: WingedPanther

WingedPanther — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:55:46 +0000

Any explanation of why this works? I wouldn't think the OS needs to monkey with that information.

By: John Columbo III

John Columbo III — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 01:11:23 +0000

New blog post: Speed up login time for Windows Vista, XP and OS X http://bit.ly/Js0IS