I've begun to notice, recently, that when I play Skyrim for about 40 minutes or more and log out it takes alittle longer for my desktop icons to show up. I know it isn't my PC because this wasn't always an issue.

Would anyone know what's causing this?

Have you tried to play offline (if you play trough steam on-line) ???

It could be multiple things, but most likely a lack of RAM/Page file. The current revision of Skyrim has LAA enabled (I think) so it could use more memory, and therefore could take longer to "release" said memory.

How much RAM do you have? How much longer does it take? How many desktop icons do you have? Do you have any Windows desktop enhancements?

> The current revision of Skyrim has LAA enabled <

they releasing it with Skyrim patch 1.3.10

Never applied to me, so I never noticed

sweet....

I only have 2 GB ram but, as I said before, this wasn't always a problem.

I have nearly four rows of desktop icons, top to bottom. Some are my Skyrim downloads folder which is probably around 15 gb by now, lol, and the other is my Skyrim saves folder. No, I don't have any windows desktop enhancement.

Could it be my firewall? I fist noticed this, though it wasn't as bad as now, when I first installed Norton.

Lack of System RAM is going to cause this problem to happen more often. Again, how many icons?... rows is meaningless because you can change the size of icons and desktop resolution factors. If its more than 30 you should really condense them. I would use folders instead of some of the icons.

It isn't ALWAYS a problem because the System RAM may not be completely used up when switching back to the desktop. The delay is because Windows needs to wait until the RAM is usable or use the much slower page file. Also the size of the icon cache may factor.

***

Without buying more RAM you could perform a clean boot. Basically you need to remove any extra services that you don't need. Your AV and/or firewall will take up RAM so they could be part of the problem. I don't recommend that you uninstall your AV/Firewall though.

How many more seconds or minutes is it taking? If its only a few more seconds I really wouldn't worry about it.

As Níeh?ggr say:

• You can put your desktop icons on folders - that will reduce the cache memory of your icons
• You can reduce the size of your icons (Hold down the left mouse button, mark 3 or 4 icons and then hold Ctrl and scroll your mice up or down)
• You can try to increase the Icon Cache size ***

*** Start - Run (Regedit) to open the Registry Editor
The navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

(Select the Explorer folder of the left)

DO THIS ---at the right panel

Create a new REG_SZ (String Value) Called Max Cached Icons (AND INCLUDE THE SPACES).

As far as I can tell a values 500 is the default where set.

But you can increase it to 4096 (4MB)

Now save and restart your machine and you are done.

Just reboot your rig when you finish playing Skyrim.
It's pretty typical behavior after your rig has just finished with a very demanding computer-consuming program...
Not all resources will be returned; certainly not immediately, if ever.

Placing alot of my icons..well most of them...into a single folder did help with this issue. But it's still there, although no where near as bad.