Is it possible to increase the thumbnail cache?

[iamaelephant]

Howdy folks! Here's the situation - I have a reasonably large photo collection (1000+ pictures and growing steadily). I'm wondering if it's possible to make the thumbnails load quicker when viewing the folders, maybe by increasing the thumbnail cache or something?

Even if it's possible to just make the folder.jpg thumbs load faster that would be really helpful, they are the most important ones. Does image size have a big impact on how fast the thumbs load? Is there a program to quickly convert image files to a certain resolution, say 1024*768? Most of my photos are very high res as they are taken using high megapixel cameras. I wouldn't mind making them smaller so long as I back them up first.

Thanks for your help!

Edit - for the record, here are my specs

AMD Sempron 2200+
512mb generic value RAM
9600 pro 128mb
POS 37gb HDD
Worse POS 12.7gb HDD (photos are on the 37gb HDD, so is the Windows install)


Edit II - Another quick question - I recently copied some photos over from a mate's computer (via a CD burner) and the thumbnails are all screwed up. It will display thumbnails from other photos (some of which I don't even have on my system) yet when you open the picture it has a completely difference image. Weird huh? Is there a fix for this?

 

[Bluestealth]

You can try and use microsoft's tweakui powertool to lower the quality of the thumbnails...

Its under explorer, thumbnails in the utility....

 

[doan]

Originally posted by: Falcon39
Edit II - Another quick question - I recently copied some photos over from a mate's computer (via a CD burner) and the thumbnails are all screwed up. It will display thumbnails from other photos (some of which I don't even have on my system) yet when you open the picture it has a completely difference image. Weird huh? Is there a fix for this?

Delete the thumbs.db file. The files that were copied from CD also have the read-only bit set - you prob need to turn it off.