Windowblinds: Annoying delay when opening Start-menu

The delay is caused by Windows needing to store the start menu in the memory and is a normal function. Once memory resident it will open instantly. Your system will be optimised to give memory priority to programs. You can change priority but it hardly seems worth it.

Some skins are more complex than others. Darkling uses 24bit colour and 150 pixels per inch resolution and the start menu bitmaps are full size - it's the only way to get those lovely smooth tones. Standard XP uses 8bit and 70 ppi with small tiled bitmaps hence smaller memory footprint.

Fuzzy: question, Photo Shop has options all the way up to 32 bit color but when it saves it, it seems to show it saved in 8 bit. Whats your take on this.

I mainly use PSP, but I do have Photoshop Elements. I assume this is the same as Photoshop but without the 'trimmings'. I just tried saving a file as 32bit bitmap and it worked fine. I don't know enough about Photoshop to be able to answer. Sounds a bit odd though.

Fuzzy: Yes PS gave the option to save as 32 bit but when you look at the file attributes in explorer, it shows it saved as 8 bits. If you would, see what it says on your file.

That's where I looked - it says:
Width: 80 pixels
Height: 33 pixels
Horizontal Resolution: 149 dpi
Vertical Resolution: 149 dpi
Bit Depth: 32
Frame Count: 1

Thanks for clearing up that delay question, Fuzzy.
I wondered about that myself (didn't bother me any), I was curious though.

Thanks Fuzzy. Guess I'll have to figure out whats up on this end. >

Although memory management with XP is tons better than previous versions it still leaves a lot to be desired. You would think it would give the Start Menu some priority! I've just had open PSP and PSE which filled my 512Mb with enough 'goo' to chuck the start menu out... > Easily sorted but it shouldn't be necessary. Black mark Microsoft

It seems there is also a Registry Key that addresses this issue with 400ms being the default, some links:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=start+menu+delay

#8 I guess that's the problem I have too... clicking startmenu first time usually makes it run normal speed after that, but after just running some programs (nothing excessive) it's gone from mem again and the delay is back.
I also whave winxp and 512mb, but it doesn't seem to help much.

Maybe you have to many programs loading up at startup. Might want to check that out and see if you need them and close them out if you don't.

I use ItweakU pro which comes with a start-up manager so you can control what does and doesn't start up at boot. I highly recommend it myself, it has many, many other features besides that.

You can control what's starts at boot with msconfig

...what not what's...must type slower