My icons load very-very slow when I go to Start/Programs

http://www.firstloox.org/forums/showthread.php?t=5114&page=2

Q: My icons load very-very slow when I go to Start/Programs to start my favourite apps. There're a lot of them, almost everything installed to a storage card, and it sometimes takes a minute to be able to see some of them after I've soft reset my PPC. A: This problem can indeed be pretty annoying. It is caused by the time needed for resource fetching, which can be pretty large especially in the case of (comparatively) slow memory cards and large EXE/DLL files to traverse. The problem is even made larger by the fact that Windows Mobile needs to re-fetch these icons after a soft reset (when you go to Start menu - incidentally, this is why even displaying Start menu can take so long after a reset if you've run several memory card-based programs before. The Start Menu isn't shown before all the icons are fetched from the card). The easiest solution to the former problem is making subfolders under \Windows\Start Menu\Programs and/or \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Games for, say, separate program/game genres (for example, Remote Controller/Phone managers/Programming Tools/Memory cleaners for apps; Action/Adventure/RPG/Multiplayer for games etc.) and moving the application starter link files there from the more generic folders with a file copier tool like Pocket File Explorer, Total Commander or Resco Explorer on the PPC or Total Commander with the WinCE FS plug-in on the PC (see this tutorial on setting up and using the latter). This way, you won't be affected (that much) by the long icon loading times because, at a time, the PDA will only need to fetch few icons, instead of the previous many, which greatly speeds up everthing. Note that, as has already been pointed out, this won't help with the long waiting you may be faced with when opening the Start menu. To combat that (if you really need it), you may want to delete the registry key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\SHELL\TaskSwitch] before resetting your device (so that the icons of the last used apps aren't fetched after the reset when you open Start menu). To achieve this, you can use all-in-one tools like Tweaks2k2; however, it's much easier (and is completely free!) to create a, say, MortRunner or nScriptm script (both are great and free Pocket PC client-side scripting tools with very good capabilities; please see Scripting on the Pocket PC - nscripts vs MortRunner vs PPC consoles, with a registry read/conditional write example (alternatives: iPAQ HQ, AximSite, PPC Magazine, FirstLoox, BrightHand, PocketMatrix) (also linked from this blog entry ) and Programming the Pocket PC - entirely PPC (not desktop)-based solutions (alternatives: iPAQ HQ, AximSite, PPC Magazine, FirstLoox, BrightHand); please note that the latter article is a bit outdated; still, it clearly shows the strengths of both scripting environments/languages) that you can execute with a simple tap on the Today screen (please see this blog entry on putting shortcuts of anything, including MortRunner / nScriptm scripts, on the Today screen) before resetting your PPC (actually, MortRunner / nScriptm can even reset your device if you want them to do so so you won't need to do anything extra to clean up the Start menu history before resetting).