'Games' folder opens soooo sloooowly

[apprentice]

Why is the GAMES folder on the Pocket PC so slow to open?

Whenever I open it especially if it has not been opened for some time or after a reset it takes ages for all the icons to appear.

Does anyone know a fix for this? or have I just got too many games installed :roll:

[KTamas]

do you have bejewelled 2 installed? I heard that it can cause problems and slow-downs...

[Menneisyys]

Why is the GAMES folder on the Pocket PC so slow to open?

Whenever I open it especially if it has not been opened for some time or after a reset it takes ages for all the icons to appear.

Does anyone know a fix for this? or have I just got too many games installed :roll:

The reason for this is the slow access speed of the one (or, some) of the games in question nd/or their not (real) conforming to the WinCE programming specifications.

Windows CE has to follow the link in the \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Games to extract the icon. If one of the apps have some problem, then, the access (and the consequal rendering of the image) can take long with some apps/games not really conforming to the specifications (or, on a problematic memory card).

A quick solution to the problem is manually creating a Games2 subdirectory under \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\ (or, under \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Games - it can be placed anywhere inside \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\ and its subdirectories and named anything) and moving some of the icons there from the original \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Games. By try-and-error, you'll find the offending program(s) quickly.

Then, if a game reinstall (after a cleanup - say, chkdsk - on the storage card if it's on a card) doesn't help, a quick hack to make the rest of the Games folder load fast is copying just the "slow-to-load" links into a separate, less-frequently used folder.

Keep us posted :)

[apprentice]

This problem has been bugging me ever since I bought my first PPC 4 years ago and I never suspected it could be an application problem. Just assumed it was the OS. If it is particularly prone to happening with games then this all makes sense. Though I did have a similar problem with a folder I created for Office apps which ocurred after I installed a certain large capacity application.

So I took your advice and created a few sub folders (which helped with tidying it all up as well!) and it seems to have done the trick! I do have Bejewelled 2 installed as well! which does seem to be one of the culprits.

Many thanks for your help! :wink:

[Menneisyys]

This problem has been bugging me ever since I bought my first PPC 4 years ago and I never suspected it could be an application problem. Just assumed it was the OS. If it is particularly prone to happening with games then this all makes sense. Though I did have a similar problem with a folder I created for Office apps which ocurred after I installed a certain large capacity application.

So I took your advice and created a few sub folders (which helped with tidying it all up as well!) and it seems to have done the trick! I do have Bejewelled 2 installed as well! which does seem to be one of the culprits.

Many thanks for your help! :wink:

Great :)