Windows 7 - Increase Icon Cache Size

lloydcodrington · 10-28-2009

Hi All,
I was wondering if anyone has come accros a way of increasing the Icon Cache size and also the Folder Icon Cache Size. Vista had some great tools for this but thus far no one seems to have thrown a Windows 7 tool in the hat for us geeks.

Thanks.
Lloyd

**ready** · 11-01-2009

Hold the control key down and scroll the mouse to increase or decrease the icon size on the desktop.

**Jonathan_King** · 11-01-2009

I think he is referring to the icon cache, not icon size.

lloydcodrington · 12-08-2009

Hi All,
Yes indeed I was refering to the CACHE size used for storing icons.

Lloyd

**Jonathan_King** · 12-08-2009

Why are you asking?
Try this solution I found:
Open the Registry Editor
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
Create a new DWORD called Max Cached Icons and set its value to 2048.
Restart your machine. Let us know if it helps.

lloydcodrington · 12-08-2009

Thanks Jonathan,
Seems to do the trick. Simply when I opened my start button the icons took a long time to display and also the icons in the control panel were taking a long time. Simply I just wanted to increase the speed at which they are displayed by increasing the cache size.

I did try your solution before but had the key as all keys are type, without the spaces.

**Jonathan_King** · 12-08-2009

Good. Thanks for posting back.

**Greg S** · 12-08-2009

Quote: Originally Posted by Jonathan_King

Why are you asking?
Try this solution I found:
Open the Registry Editor
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
Create a new DWORD called Max Cached Icons and set its value to 2048.
Restart your machine. Let us know if it helps.

Anyone know what the default size of the Icon Cache is?

lloydcodrington · 12-08-2009

The default size is 500.

**Greg S** · 12-08-2009

Quote: Originally Posted by lloydcodrington

The default size is 500.

And that is a DWORD? Also I'm unclear on the spaces part of the DWORD. Just for the record, I checked the size of my icon cache and it's 4 mb without any reg tweak. Any links to sources on this for Win 7?

Windows 7 - Increase Icon Cache Size

Increase Icon Cache Size problems?