Windows 7 - quick launch slow to populate icons

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BM00

Gawd
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Aug 7, 2004
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Does anyone know the solution to fix a slow quick launch in windows 7? By default quick launch isn't enabled -- so I enabled it and it works as it should (with one setback) It is slow to populate icons and the taskbar is frozen until it populates. The time varies from a second to a few. It happens no matter the size of shortcuts I keep on the taskbar as well.

Has anyone run into this issue? Any ideas on how to fix/tweak it?
 
BM00 said:
Does anyone know the solution to fix a slow quick launch in windows 7? By default quick launch isn't enabled -- so I enabled it and it works as it should (with one setback) It is slow to populate icons and the taskbar is frozen until it populates. The time varies from a second to a few. It happens no matter the size of shortcuts I keep on the taskbar as well.

Has anyone run into this issue? Any ideas on how to fix/tweak it?
Click to expand...
I have the EXACT same problem and have been troubleshooting it for the past few weeks. I've cleared my icon cache as well as increased the cache size, with no positive results. The only thing I've found to help speed it up is to remove the amount of icons. If you only have 2 or 3 icons it will pause for a moment then load them. Before I had several and it took several seconds to populate them all. It didn't do this every time, generally once after a reboot, then it would work right for quite a while then do it again the next day.

The most irritating part is the entire taskbar/gui is unresponsive until it draws the icons!

Something I just thought of doing is to make sure the quicklaunch folder is in the index.:D I'll have to wait till I get home to try it though.
 
This does still raise the question of why Quicklaunch is even necessary with the introduction of pinned applications and the searchable start menu.
 
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it doesn't just do this in Quicklaunch though. Even when you pin a shortcut to Start Menu, after a reboot, when you open the Start menu, the first 4 or 5 top icons will show, but the rest will show the white Windows "unknown file" icon for about 4-5 seconds, then appear.

Once the Office Outlook icon wouldn't show up at all. I had to right-click, hit properties, and change icon and point it at outlook.exe again for it to show up.

Very annoying. I hope Microsoft knows about this.
 
Arainach said:
This does still raise the question of why Quicklaunch is even necessary with the introduction of pinned applications and the searchable start menu.
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Because I don't want to look at 15+ icon shortcuts on my taskbar, I'd rather have 4 shown and the rest hidden. The pin feature is one of the things I don't like about win7 by default.
 
BM00 said:
Because I don't want to look at 15+ icon shortcuts on my taskbar, I'd rather have 4 shown and the rest hidden. The pin feature is one of the things I don't like about win7 by default.
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That's what Pin to Start Menu is for :-P

Show 4 pinned to task bar, and the rest pinned to start menu. They're all just as accessible. No more, no less.
 
Azhar said:
That's what Pin to Start Menu is for :-P

Show 4 pinned to task bar, and the rest pinned to start menu. They're all just as accessible. No more, no less.
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Yup

I loved Quick Launch too, but I just do this now. If only I can get my brain to figure out that Show Desktop is now on the right side of the screen...
 
Yeah, well not all of us like having the buttons be the tabs also because of issues of sorting etc. I want all my icons to stay on the left side regardless of if they are open or not and that doesn't happen with the new Pin to task bar.

Also, just checked and AppData is excluded from Indexing. I modified Users and drilled down to quick launch and added it. Lets see if this works :)
 
bigdogchris said:
Yeah, well not all of us like having the buttons be the tabs also because of issues of sorting etc. I want all my icons to stay on the left side regardless of if they are open or not and that doesn't happen with the new Pin to task bar.

Also, just checked and AppData is excluded from Indexing. I modified Users and drilled down to quick launch and added it. Lets see if this works :)
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Leave it in default mode, and you'll find that your pinned apps magically are always in the exact same place. It'll amaze you how your muscle memory will pick it up.
 
Yeah, well not all of us like having the buttons be the tabs also because of issues of sorting etc. I want all my icons to stay on the left side regardless of if they are open or not and that doesn't happen with the new Pin to task bar.
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.....that's....EXACTLY what the new taskbar does. That's exactly the problem it was designed to solve - have programs be in a fixed place whether they're running or not.
 
I stopped seeing my icons load after I moved to a SSD... They just pop. :D
 
Tawnos said:
Leave it in default mode, and you'll find that your pinned apps magically are always in the exact same place. It'll amaze you how your muscle memory will pick it up.
Click to expand...

Arainach said:
.....that's....EXACTLY what the new taskbar does. That's exactly the problem it was designed to solve - have programs be in a fixed place whether they're running or not.
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You guys really are trying to make me sound stupid, or make yourself sound pompous.

I do not want the 'launch' icon to be the same as the tab in which the content resides.

Could it be any more simple? Probably not. I do however use Windows Explorer with the new pin to task bar.
 
bigdogchris said:
You guys really are trying to make me sound stupid, or make yourself sound pompous.

I do not want the 'launch' icon to be the same as the tab in which the content resides.

Could it be any more simple? Probably not. I do however use Windows Explorer with the new pin to task bar.
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We don't need to anything, you did a great job yourself :).

There's practically no good reason to separate the launch place from the running place. You lose any guarantee of order, any benefit of spatial memory, and take up additional screen real estate (something I value even on a 30" monitor). 99.99% of people who have expressed a "I want quick launch back" do so without ever trying the superbar.
 
Tawnos said:
We don't need to anything, you did a great job yourself :).

There's practically no good reason to separate the launch place from the running place. You lose any guarantee of order, any benefit of spatial memory, and take up additional screen real estate (something I value even on a 30" monitor). 99.99% of people who have expressed a "I want quick launch back" do so without ever trying the superbar.
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:rolleyes:

I guess I'm one of the .01% then. I think personal preference is a great reason to do something. Plus I said I do use the super bar for some things, just not for everything do I want the launch icon to be the content tab.

Anyways, you're one of those types of people here who make this site unfriendly. Just because you do something one way doesn't make it the right way for everybody. Get over yourself.
 
You do know that even if you use the same launch/running icon or place for an app you can still launch a new process while running the app no? (hold Shift) That seems to be the main reason that a lot of people initially dislike having the taskbar work that way, I can't imagine why else it'd bother ya but to each his own, no big deal. Just mentioning this in case it you're unaware of it...
 
Impulse said:
You do know that even if you use the same launch/running icon or place for an app you can still launch a new process while running the app no? (hold Shift) That seems to be the main reason that a lot of people initially dislike having the taskbar work that way, I can't imagine why else it'd bother ya but to each his own, no big deal. Just mentioning this in case it you're unaware of it...
Click to expand...

Yeah and you can also right-click the pinned program and select the name of it (Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, etc)
 
Ya, there's so many nice usability shortcuts for power users in Win7, it's great.
 
I wish there was a power user way to click on an icon and have it launch to my 2nd monitor.
 
I understand all of the methods to open new windows. I still want the old quicklaunch. I like having all of the icons hidden until I need them. Between the quicklaunch and pinned superbar items, I have 10 icons. I don't want all 10 being displayed at once. Right now I have 3 quicklaunch and 1 superbar pinned and it's perfect.

Anyways, adding quicklaunch folder to index has not helped much. Sometimes it's still slow to populate.
 
Responding to an ancient post here!

This quick launch lag has bothered me for years, and I've just learned to live with it. It only lags once per reboot cycle, so it was kind of livable.

However, I just ran Windows update for the first time in a couple months... downloaded several anonymous no description KB's... and what do you know, the lag is gone! I'm happy, but also very surprised that MS would go out of their way to fix an old unsupported feature that we stopped complaining about years ago. Maybe the fix was just a side effect of a recent patch... or maybe I'm alone? I guess I'm mainly posting to see if the problem has disappeared recently for others too.
 
I doesn't happen to me anymore and hasn't in a long time. I don't remember any specific thing fixing it.
 
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