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20th August 2006

SLOW LOGIN - MY RECENT DOCUMENTS - MY PLACES

Brian Grainger

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brianATgrainger1.freeserve.co.uk


 

This feature is of particular interest to Windows XP network users who use Microsoft Office. However, Windows XP Home users will find parts of this document informative. I am going to discuss slow login times, the Windows XP ‘My Recent Document’ facility and the Microsoft Office ‘My Places’ facility.

The above topics may seem like an obscure combination but my sudden interest in all three came about from a common source. We have been using Windows XP at work for nearly a year now. I was beginning to notice that it was taking longer and longer for me to login in the morning and it started to irritate me. I started to investigate to see if I could shorten the login time.

For those who do not have to login to a network a little background detail as to what it involves is in order. I sit at my PC, turn on the monitor and press Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the login screen. I give my login ID and password and click OK. The login process commences. The first stage gives a couple of message screens - Loading personal settings - Applying personal settings. After that, all the programs and processes loaded at start up are retrieved and run. Eventually I am presented with my desktop. I suspect those of you running XP at home, who choose to log in, go through a similar process, except the first two message screens do not appear.

A common source of start up delays with Windows XP home users is that the number of programs and processes loaded at start up increases with time. Each new installation of software adds something else. Consequently, the first port of call to home users with lengthening start up times is to look at the programs and processes running after start up (Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select the Task Manager) and see if any are obviously not needed. To do a real thorough analysis a review of certain registry keys is in order. The following are the most obvious:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Run
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Run

Over the past year at work nothing has been added in the way of software. This is not the problem I am experiencing.

What I have noticed is that the period during which personal settings are loaded has been getting longer and longer.

My first problem was to understand what is meant by ‘personal settings’. I initially thought that this meant the specific user data, (rather than the hardware data), of the registry - held as the file ntuser.dat. OK, the registry tends to expand with time so this could be a factor. However, I was not totally convinced this was the sole reason for the problem.

At some point it dawned on my that there was some other data that was specific to me - my profile folders. Apart from the user registry settings the profile is made up of a number of files that are specific to me. They define such things as: programs I may want to run on start up; the layout of my Desktop; my settings for the applications I run; my favourites; my temporary internet files; … I think what led me to the profile was that there is a task constantly running on our PCs that, when the mouse is hovered over the icon in the system tray, displays the available profile space. We are allocated 20MB profile space and mine was showing something between 10-11 MB. I had a recollection this was higher when we first had Windows XP installed. If you run out of profile space it has serious repercussions. Microsoft Word might suddenly refuse to save and you lose all that you have typed in that session. Consequently I keep an eye on the profile space.

The way our network is set up, so that we may roam around the company and use whichever PC is available, is that the profile files are stored on a central server and cached to the PC you are working on when you log on. Any changes made to the profile during the session are written back to the local cache and to the central server on logoff. Clearly some time is involved in the process of caching my profile to my workstation so I decided to have a look at my profile area and see if there was any junk I could dispose of.

On a Windows XP networked machine the profile files are stored in:
c:\documents and settings\<user id>

On a Windows XP machine upgraded from NT4 the equivalent files are stored in:
c:\windows\profiles\<user id>
[where windows is the name of the directory where Windows files are stored]

It is always good to check this area for:

  • .tmp files
  • filename starting with ‘~’, especially if they are Word files. This happens when Word crashes and a copy of your file may be here with a name starting with ‘~’. If the file is big then profile space is eaten up quickly.
  • Cookies and other temporary internet files

However, what really surprised me were the contents of the following two folders:
<profile path>\recent (which is displayed as My Recent Documents)
<profile path>\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent

These two folders were chock full of shortcuts - not just to files, but to folders as well.

The first folder I understood. This held the documents I had recently worked on, which are accessible from the Start - My Recent Documents menu . The only thing was I thought this held details of the last 15 files and the rest were lost. This folder had a LOT more than 15 entries and included folders.

The second folder was new to me. Why did Office have a separate ‘Recent Documents’ folder?

First things first. I deleted all the entries in both these folders. This resulted in freeing up over 2MB of profile space. As each shortcut is only 1-2K of space you can see how many there were! I also moved a printer driver package that my IT department had saved on my desktop when they installed an HP LaserJet for me. This took away another 2MB.

Did I notice a difference in login time the next day? You bet I did! This was clearly the source of the problem and I will be checking this more carefully in future.

Before I go on to discuss the contents of these ‘Recent Documents’ folders I would like to come back to that Printer Driver on my Desktop. It is common practice when downloading files to save them to the Desktop so you can find them easily. Clearly, in an environment where the Desktop is part of a strictly limited profile file space, this is not a good idea.

Let me discuss first of all the …

<profile path>\recent folder

This does contain shortcuts to the last 15 documents accessed. However, it must be used for something else if storing all those extra shortcuts has a purpose. The answer can be found if you open a standard Windows Accessory like Notepad, Wordpad or Paint. Open one of these for yourself and then select File - Open.

On the left of the file list you will see something like the following items:
My Recent Documents
Desktop
My Computer
My Network Places

I’ve never bothered with these before! Now I was suddenly interested in what happened if I clicked My Recent Documents. You’ve guessed it. I could now see all the folders and files shortcuts in the <profile path>\recent folder filtered by the filetype parameter. In Wordpad, .rtf files are shown by default. In Paint, picture files are shown. You can change the filetype to ‘All Documents’ and you will see everything.

This still doesn’t explain why shortcuts to folders are shown. I still haven’t worked that out - although when we come to discuss the /Office/Recent folder we might see a clue.

This leads me on to the discussion of the …

<profile path>\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent folder

Because the existence of this folder surprised me I actually investigated it first, so I did not have the clues that the <profile path>\recent folder gave me. In fact it was the other way round! After I had investigated the <profile path>\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent folder I then knew where to look to work out the purpose of the other one.

So what did I know? I knew it had something to do with the recently accessed documents - presumably those created and modified with Microsoft Office. I also knew that on the File menu of an Office application the last four files accessed by that application were listed at the end of the menu. This was to give quick access to open them again. On the basis that it had something to do with opening files I looked at the File - Open dialog for an Office application. I looked at that for Word but it applies equally to Excel, PowerPoint and even Outlook (not Outlook Express).

I looked carefully and noticed for the first time the huge icons on the left for History, My Documents, Desktop, Favorites and My Network Places. Be aware that I use Office 2002. If you use Office 2003 then History is labelled as Recent Documents. I clicked on History and found all the shortcuts I had seen in the <profile path>\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Recent folder. Now I knew the purpose of all those shortcuts to files being kept. I was still at a loss to understand why shortcuts to folders were kept.

I am not sure what I was googling for now but I found references to the My Places bar, apparently the Microsoft name for that bar of icons on the left of the Microsoft Office Open dialog box. The best reference I came across was Microsoft Knowledge Base article 826214:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=826214
This tells you how to add to, remove from, rename and hide items on the My Places bar.

Now I could see a reason for the shortcuts to folders. If there was a folder you accessed often it would be on the shortcut list in the History and you could add it to the My Places bar. Now you are just one click away from access to all the files in that folder. Folders you have not accessed before can be added to the My Places bar by traversing the folders using the Lookin box, etc. This is really useful.

The way I arrange my work files is by Project and then by task. Each task has its own folder and all the documents accessed in carrying out that task are in that folder. I also have a 'task log' in the task folder that gives traceability as to how the task was carried out. In addition, it provides hyperlinks to all the documents relevant to the task. For the longer tasks I may want to access the task folder for a number of weeks. I had already found it tedious, in this instance, to traverse to the relevant folder with Windows Explorer to locate my documents. My first approach was to setup the folder as a favorite and then I can access it from the Windows Explorer Favorites menu. This approach still results in at least 2 clicks and possibly more depending on how the Favorites folders are structured. Because my task log is a Word document I now have a quicker way. If I put the task folder on the My Places bar I am one click away from it. Then I can simply open the document I want or, if I don’t quite know which I want, open the task log to check. When the task is complete I simply remove the task folder from the My Places bar.

If you think about it, the My Places bar is to Office what the Favorites folder is to Windows/Internet Explorer. I do wonder sometimes why Microsoft duplicates functionality like this. I think the reasoning behind it is that for a lot of users Office is the only tool they need to use. As far as they are concerned the distinction between Office and the underlying operating system is blurred. Consequently, Microsoft duplicate operating system functionality in Office. This may become even more important if Office becomes web based, accessed by a browser - where the link between application and operating system is more tenuous, if not non-existent.

The My Places bar in Office is also the exact equivalent of the bar in the open dialog boxes of the Windows accessories. Yet, we cannot add our own references to that and Favorites is not shown - so we cannot customise it that way. Clearly the Office user interface is one up on the Windows equivalent. Some more googling has shown that it IS possible to modify the Places bar, (this is what the Microsoft Techies call it), in a Windows common open dialog box. Microsoft recommend getting the Windows XP Powertoy TWEAKUI to do it. For the really technically minded here is a reference that explains how to do it manually, along with some explanation of how it works.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/03/03/CuttingEdge/

As I have explained above the two ‘recent’ folders have some benefits. I have also identified a drawback, at least for users on a network. There is another potential drawback, depending on your viewpoint to privacy. The ‘recent’ folders keep a log of every document you access. What a wonderful tool for the ‘forces of crime prevention’ when they seize your PC! Every entry is also duplicated in the Registry - although the Registry will change in line with any additions or deletions you make to the folders.

I’ve come to the end of my trail of investigation. It started because I had slow login times. Somehow, it has ended with a really useful tool to provide quick access to user defined folders! That’s Windows for you: Never Know Where I’m Going Today.


 

 

 

 


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