speed up loading folder with lots of images

Hi,
I have a folder with 3100 images, set to display large icons, sorted by date.

Each time I come back to this folder, windows will take like 8 or 10 seconds to load them all.
I don't think it rebuilds thumnails, which would take even much longer, no it seems it reloads and resorts.

Anyway to speed this up so it will load instantly ?

Thanks,
Brakkar

That sounds normal Brakkar. 8-10 seconds is fairly quick for that many images. I have a folder of images with sub-folders of images which takes 3-4 seconds to open, but it has less than 1000 files.

EDIT: It has 2555 files, most of which are less than 400KB.

Then why same directory with same 3000 files is opened much faster, almost instantly on old, computer running windows vista ?
Whenever I go back in directory with vista, it loads instantly, where 7 seems to reload / resort everything each time ?!

This is caused by Windows 7 deleting and recreating the thumbnail cache every time. See if this article helps you.

Please note that once you prevent the delete operation of the files inside this folder, thumbnails will not be deleted if you run Disk Cleanup or any 3rd party cleanup tool.

A Guy

Thanks, I tried this but it didn't change things at all. I'm not sure thumbnails are rebuilt each time in fact, it seems to be something else, like resort or thing like that. Fact is: it's still much slower on 7 than on vista, and i'm thinking of using a third party app for browsing my images directories.

Just had a thought, do you have Superfetch turned off?

I went in msconfig and see that it's checked, but stopped.

Interesting: when I have the images in that directory sorted by NAME, it will load instantly even if I open directory subsequently. When I sort them by DATE, which is what I want to use, then it will take the 10 seconds to resort, but will do it again and again each time I load the directory. So it seems problem has to do with how I set the sorting: this is what I thought initially: it doesn't rebuild the thumbs: it resorts everything each time I go in the directory and that thakes 8-10 sec.
This could be a clue to help find solution to problem ?

Sorting by name is the default. My guess would be that any other sequence is considered "temporary" and is established any time you open the folder.