Dragging icon(s) on desktop freezes movement.

[bshea]

Let me preface this by saying I have anywhere between 40-60 icons on my desktop. (Haven't counted them..)

At any rate, every so often I have something screw up my icon positions or 'reset' them.

I was moving them back into place today, and finally was so fed up with the time involved to do this that I came here.

This has been going on for months, and I have no idea when or why it started.

As the title mentions, when I am moving an icon (or more then one even), the desktop will stop the currently moving/draggin icons. Seemingly 'freeze' them. I wait for roughly 15 seconds or so, and then it continues on it's way-(If I keep the mouse button held down during this interval). If I don't then when it starts 'moving' again, it just drops it off wherever the last place the mouse was. As I mentioned this is a on again off again thing. I move maybe 2 or 3, then on the next one it freezes again... uggg!

I searched up and down on google and here and other forums and found nothing.

Is this just my system? Do I have too many icons on the desktop?

(Maybe it is trying to do a **** refresh -(Which is another annoyance I have-it refreshes way too much for apparently no reason.), while I am moving them. (This doesn't seem to be the case...))

Any input would be helpful!

Thanks!

EDIT:

PS: For a fix (of sorts) does anyone know of a decent tool that records icons positions? I have an nVidia card, and I use to have an ATI. I know ATItool use to do this albeit inaccurately.

Edited October 18, 2006 by bshea

[LLXX]

That's not a lot... I have 104 on the desktop at the moment, and I just tried dragging them around, no problems.

If there is heavy disk activity during those periods of freezing, your disk probably needs defragging.

Otherwise it could be an excess of rubbish in the registry - Windows maintains the position of each icon in each folder that has been set to something other than the default views in the registry, and if that list becomes long, you can experience delays.

To clear the list and start over, delete the entire StreamMRU and Streams subkeys under

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

and reboot or restart the shell. It will automatically recreate the two subkeys and start storing information in them with each new folder you open.

[bshea]

That's not a lot... I have 104 on the desktop at the moment, and I just tried dragging them around, no problems.

If there is heavy disk activity during those periods of freezing, your disk probably needs defragging.

Otherwise it could be an excess of rubbish in the registry - Windows maintains the position of each icon in each folder that has been set to something other than the default views in the registry, and if that list becomes long, you can experience delays.

To clear the list and start over, delete the entire StreamMRU and Streams subkeys under

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

and reboot or restart the shell. It will automatically recreate the two subkeys and start storing information in them with each new folder you open.

Not the disk. There is absolutely nothing going on that has the light coming on. I will look into to both though..

thanks.. I will report back. (Actually I probably do have over 100 now that I am looking more closely.) Oh well.

Edited October 19, 2006 by bshea

[bshea]

I deleted those subkeys. Still freezes, and now all the icons got reset because of deleting them. hehe. I will just leave them be till hopefully I can clear this up!

Filemon showed 0 activity when icon freezes so I didn't include it:

As far as I know I shouldn't have any dhcp anything running. I know the client is disabled under Services...

The regmon output is attached.

(this is during icon freeze up)

Thanks for any help!

Regmon_OUTPUT_During_icon_freeze.txt

[LLXX]

That's supposed to be normal. I just tried moving some icons around with Regmon running and it reported the same DHCP activity. My DHCP client is enabled, though.

The only other possibility I can think of is your processor is overheating and slowing down... what sort of temperatures are you experiencing?

[bshea]

I don't think it could be the chip as it is running at 93F. Or at least that is what Motherboard Monitor shows while I had it freeze. (I also have a Zalman 9500 attached to P4 Chip (it's a 3Ghz PRESCOTT) to keep it cool).

Also, is there a possibility that it could be any other sub keys under explorer in the reg that I could delete? There are others that have LOADS of subkeys in them.

I can click the START button, click on 'File' under windows open, and I can even open stuff (new windows/excluding exlporer related). Only can open stuff either thru start menu or thru already open windows.

This excludes C:\Windows\Explorer and explorer related commands.. like explorer.cmd. I also cannot open task bar stuff at this point. But like I said the start button works - so to speak. (start menu still shows up on the desktop even though I try and close it-so do background windows I try and close. This all clears up at once when the icon finally repositions itself.)

(I am getting Reg Keys opening to the video card when explorer "locks up" too..video card problem?) Other then explorer related, pretty much everything works. Are you sure you tried moving an icon over other icons for up to like 60 seconds? Sure this doesn't happen on your computer?

I also wanted to add that no other programs exhibit this problem. Games and so forth do not lock up like this at any point. Just explorer(desktop).

Please see this next attachment I made today. I narrowed it down some more. (Regmon output can be hard to deal with..as it pumps out so much info at once).

I have made a note near the middle of this file detailing how this could be some other keys involved.

Thanks for your help...

-B Shea

EDIT:

Just figured out something which may be of interest. I only get this to happen when I am moving it over other icons. (Not over 'blank' area of desktop.) I also have noted that I had winamp open and when icon froze and I tried to minimize winamp, it 'froze' also. (Still played though). Like I said, everything catches up again once icon is unfroze. This is true with anything I have open. If I try and close or minimize, it only catches up once the icon has been unfrozen/'let go'.

Regmon_OUTPUT2_During_icon_freeze.txt

Edited October 19, 2006 by bshea

[LLXX]

Leave the other subkeys alone...

When you mentioned that it only occurred when moving items over other icons, this is a big hint - does it happen only with certain file types dragged on top of others, or do all icons dragged over other icons do the same thing? In the registry also contains information about something called DragDropHandlers, which implies exactly what the name says - provides functionality for drag and drop operations. One or more of those could be malfunctioning.

[bshea]

Leave the other subkeys alone...

When you mentioned that it only occurred when moving items over other icons, this is a big hint - does it happen only with certain file types dragged on top of others, or do all icons dragged over other icons do the same thing? In the registry also contains information about something called DragDropHandlers, which implies exactly what the name says - provides functionality for drag and drop operations. One or more of those could be malfunctioning.

Well, since all of my desktop icons are really shortcuts, I don't think I have ever tried it. (Or do you mean diff file types regardless of it being a shortcut?) I re-installed xp on a different partition, and then tried it. Works fine now. I am loaded up in that partition now, so for me to test this, I will have to load the 'old' desktop. I will investigate. Did you take a look at that last regmon output I attached?

It mentions something called: NewDragImages

"HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\NewDragImages NOT FOUND"

It is very hard to narrow it done exactly (in regmon) to a point exactly where it freezes. (As I have to start output, then quickly 'kill' it when it finishes being frozen. Then narrowing it down from there.)

Obviously regmon output a tremendous amount of data in a short time. So as I said it is hard for me to find the exact moment it freezes. But that was the best I could do.

Thanks...I will keep updating when I find something!

Edited October 21, 2006 by bshea

[mc134]

Use Desktop Icon Restore:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/iconrestore.html

[LLXX]

It is very hard to narrow it done exactly (in regmon) to a point exactly where it freezes. (As I have to start output, then quickly 'kill' it when it finishes being frozen. Then narrowing it down from there.)

Obviously regmon output a tremendous amount of data in a short time. So as I said it is hard for me to find the exact moment it freezes. But that was the best I could do.

You can use the filter option to only log accesses by explorer.exe, and also stop any unnecessary programs you have running in the background (could those be causing the problem too?) Edited October 22, 2006 by LLXX