obobskivich wrote:Tried a modified hosts file? A lot lighter than yet-another-extension model.
Example of modified hosts file:
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
It had never occurred to me. I'll definitely look into that. Thanks!
obobskivich wrote:On the MSE issue - this seems like kind of an obvious question to me, but: why not just use the start menu for all of those exes, instead of re-inventing the wheel with a mega folder? 😊
Simple convenience. Also, it's not like I use that "mega folder" of shortcuts for everything. Only utility apps are there. Now, I keep my games' shortcuts inside a folder that's inside of the shortcuts folder (Yo dawg! I heard you like... err, whatever, you get the point).
Also, I have a toolbar leading to the game shortcut folder on the taskbar. The idea is, I have a complete list of all of my games, and only my games, available with a single click. If I want a complete list of all the utility apps, I go to the shortcuts folder. Should I decide "hey, let's play a game instead of whatever useful thing I was gonna do with my time", the folder with the games shortcuts is right there.
That way, everything is separated and sorted conveniently, while if I was gonna go through start menu > all programs, not only do I get everything mixed together, but also a pretty long list consisting of names of the software. No icons which would allow me to quickly visually pick out what I want (which is possible when you have a shortcuts folder. Get the point?)
Also, for the games I play most frequently and the utilities I need to access quickly, there are pinned shortcuts in the start menu.
The result of all of that is that whereas finding a specific software I want to use would normally take me like 5 seconds, it now only takes 2. I know that you are probably reading this with your eyes popping out so let me just admit it: yeah, I'm a complete nut when it comes to optimizing everything to the last detail and making sure that everything is in its place.
obobskivich wrote:That said, I've never had issues opening directories with stacks of exes, zips, dlls, etc in them (up to say maybe 100), how big of a folder are we talking about in your situation though? 1000s? 10000s? How much memory does your computer have? Are you using ReadyBoost (or an SSD) to speed-up disk operations?
A quick'n'dirty fix you could do, would be to make that mega-folder read-only, and set it as an exclusion in MSE for real-time (scan it periodically ofc). It would require you to adjust perms to add exes, but otherwise should work.
Remember we are not talking about exes, zips, dlls and such. Those actually don't take that long to load even with MSE running. We are talking shortcuts. That means those icons which need to load up aren't actually there in that one single folder. Those are scattered all over the hard drive. To load up the icon on a shortcut of a game, the system has to access the installation folder of that game, and because the system accesses it, the real time protection on the antivirus also takes a look at it and only after that does the icon display. That has to happen for tens of shortcuts in that folder. If the antivirus is sluggish, the whole process is slow, and it's as simple as that.
And having said that the actual .exes the shortcuts are referring to are scattered all over the hdd, keep in mind that's a pretty darn big hdd. 1TB to be exact. Right now, it's 3/4 full. Every now and then I defrag the drive with UltraDefrag (I turned off the useless default automatic defrag of Windows 7) and it makes a noticeable difference every time but there's only so much you can do when you have to go through so much bulk.
As for the processing power of my PC: 4GB DDR2 and an Athlon 2.8 x2. That should be enough juice to at least warrant quick loading of icons with any antivirus as long as the antivirus isn't sluggish. I'm not using ready boost. That thing is only for pre-fetched stuff, though. In other words, ready boost doesn't actually boost performance, it just loads up most commonly used stuff so that it can be accessed a bit faster. Meh. I did, however, make the pagefile bigger and created another pagefile on my second hdd (160GB). I believe that my system has all the breathing room it needs to work at an optimal performance and it does with, for example, Panda antivirus.