Desktop icons slow to display (sometimes) on power on boot

Running Win11 Home, 24H2.

Normally on a power on boot, I enter my Win11 password and press the ENTER key. The desktop icons are displayed within about a second.

But in about once in 8 power on boots, I enter my Win11 password, press the ENTER key and it takes about 20 to 25 seconds for the desktop icons to display. When that happens, some icons in Win11's system tray (notifications area) do not display. Especially the icons for BitDefender and AutoHotKey.

So then I do a restart (or shutdown and power on boot) and Win11 boots up normally as described above.

I've just now done the "MaxCachedIcons" registry mod per Brink's tutorial. There wasn't a "MaxCachedIcons" entry so I created it and set the value to 4096.

Will see if that corrects the problem but in the mean time, I wanted to find out if others are also having a "slow to display desktop icons" problem in Win11. And it they found the fix. (I never had this problem in Win10 with the same programs installed). I don't understand why my copy of Win11 will boot normally for about 7 times and then have the slow icons problem, then boot normally for multiple times and then have the slow icons problem.

Try performing clean boot state.

FreeBooter said:

Try performing clean boot state.

How to perform a clean boot in Windows - Microsoft Support

Describes how to use the clean boot process to troubleshoot a problem in Windows

support.microsoft.com

Click to expand...

Thanks for the help. I will try that after I see whether the registry "MaxCachedIcons" mod fixes the slow desktop icons problem or not.

If the problem persists and I try the clean boot state, would your recommended procedure be to:

1. Try the clean boot state when I first power on my PC in the morning.
2. If the slow desktop icons problem doesn't happen, then do a restart into normal Windows 11?
3. Repeat for about 10 days to see if the problem never happens in the clean boot state.

If the problem never happens in the clean boot state, then I would need to enable drivers and windows services half at at time to isolate the problem causing driver or windows service?

You might have a corrupted Icon cache.

Rollback_Jockey said:

You might have a corrupted Icon cache.

Click to expand...

I've seen YouTube videos that discuss deleting the icon cache files. The puzzling thing with if it is a corrupted Icon cache is, why does Win11 boot normally about 7 times and have the slow to display desktop icons problem one time. Then boots normally for another 7 times and then fail, rinse & repeat. (7 normal boots is just an example. Problem occurs randomly.)

Am thinking if corruption is the cause, that the problem would happen on every power on boot.

For the time being, I'm testing whether creating "MaxCachedIcons" in the registry will fix my problem. Will take about 10 days of morning power on boots to determine if the problem is resolved or persists. (I shutdown my PC every night before going to bed.)

Thanks much for helping. I really appreciate it.