Explorer resetting "Max Cached Icons"?
Mad_Maxine
quite some time...
With regards to the Max Cached Icons registry setting:
[HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer]
"Max Cached Icons"="4095"
As you know (or should know), the default icon cache of 500 is woefully
inadequate. Microsoft recommends a larger setting of 2000, but I actually
prefer the maximum of 4095. Some say it should be a maximum of 4096 but it's
hard to be sure given that Microsoft themselves say the range is BETWEEN 100
and 4096 (e.g., 101 to 4095 inclusive). The following article supports this
statement:
Icons randomly change to different icons
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q132668/
The point is that, according to the above article, the setting should be a
STRING value.
So why is it that Explorer automatically changes the setting to a DWORD
value of 2000?
Note that this change doesn't occur straight away -- it may take a day or
two. I finally tracked this down using Sysinternals REGMON over several days
running from start-up (the machine was actually active for over 8 hours
before the change occurred).
The DWORD value has no effect of course (because it must be a string value),
which means the default of 500 takes over the next time you reboot. The
usual indication that something is wrong is that desktop icons take forever
to refresh (whereas, with a value of 4095, it takes less than a second to
refresh the 55+ icons on my desktop).
I'm not sure when this behaviour began, but it's damned annoying to be told
one thing by Microsoft and their own product doing something else
entirely -- to the detriment of the product and, more importantly, without
the user's consent. I've now resorted to running a registry script at
shutdown to ensure the value of 4095 is restored during logoff.
Can anyone shed any light on this? Is it really Windows Explorer making the
change or are there any known malware's exhibiting this behaviour? How would
I go about tracking them down, given that REGMON reckons explorer.exe is the
culprit?
TIA.