How to increase Xlobby load speed

[colonelsnow]

Xlobby takes an awfully long time to load on my system. I have a Pentium 3 800mhz with 128mb ram. If I up the ram will the load speed increase noticeably or am I limited by the processor?

[AirPost]

Lt, I mean, Colonel,

Which part of the loading process does it take a long time? On my test pc which has a Barton 2700, it also takes a while to load, specially in the plugin stage. For some reason it takes about 20 seconds just to load the plugins then another 10-15 seconds to load everything so about a half minute to load everything.

Previous versions loaded up pretty quickly but I noticed that since the weather plugin was introduced, it kinda slowed up the loading part. I tried removing the USB-UIRT plugin and unchecking the "load http on startup" but still the same.

Does anyone else have this loading issue as well?

[Twit]

Colonel,

My old HTPC (Duron 850) also took a while to load.

1 - The xweather plugin updates it self at every xlobby start. If you do not use the weather plugin or usb-uirt plugin then empty the contents of the plugin directory.

2 - If you are using a non default skin then check on the skins/someskin/databases folder, as databses like news.xml also update at startup. If you do not use them then delete them. Leave the template folder alone.

3 - Remove any background or button image that you do not use - xlobby preloads (i think) all the images wheather they are used or not. I copied a new button into the buttons directory and started xlobby then tried to delete that button - windows moans about it being in use by another program.

4 - Delete any xml screens you do not use.

5 - Resize/convert your graphics. IE a 1 meg BMP file will load way slower than its jpg or png equivilant. The resizing of my images helped me alot.
If your htpc runs at 800X600 then make sure your backgrounds are not bigger.

Later
Simon.

[colonelsnow]

Colonel,

My old HTPC (Duron 850) also took a while to load.

1 - The xweather plugin updates it self at every xlobby start. If you do not use the weather plugin or usb-uirt plugin then empty the contents of the plugin directory.

2 - If you are using a non default skin then check on the skins/someskin/databases folder, as databses like news.xml also update at startup. If you do not use them then delete them. Leave the template folder alone.

3 - Remove any background or button image that you do not use - xlobby preloads (i think) all the images wheather they are used or not. I copied a new button into the buttons directory and started xlobby then tried to delete that button - windows moans about it being in use by another program.

4 - Delete any xml screens you do not use.

5 - Resize/convert your graphics. IE a 1 meg BMP file will load way slower than its jpg or png equivilant. The resizing of my images helped me alot.
If your htpc runs at 800X600 then make sure your backgrounds are not bigger.

Later
Simon.

Simon:

A couple of (dumb) questions regarding your suggestions #3 and #4

#3 : You mean to empty the background and buttons folder of any that I do not use in my skin? I use the Colby skin and I know that he has a lot of extra buttons in the folders that are not actually being used.

#4 Where do i find the XML screens?

Thanks

[Twit]

3 - Yes - Copy and paste somewhere else, then start xlobby - if you see any yellow boxes on the screens it means you moved something the skin needs. If you click on the yellow box in the skin editor you can see the name of the image, just close xlobby and put that image back.

4 - For the xml screens they are the .xml files in skins\colbyskin. The easiest way is to start xlobby and load the skin editor (pause\break key) then click the 'goto screen' tab and click all the screens in the box and decide if you want/need them. Write down the names of the screens you do not want/need and close xlobby. Say you did not want the 'ppcmenu' screen then in skins\clobyskin you will see 'ppcmenu.xml' - remove it. In fact if you do not use a ppc then remove all files begining with ppc.

Probably better to copy the files elsewhere just incase you need them back.

The extrabuttons folder that i have in my colby skin buttons folder makes no difference.

On the latest colbyskin downoad there are screens for games ie nintendo.xml. I do not use games on my htpc so have removed these.

[colonelsnow]

One last question. How do you remove unwanted buttons from appearing on the default screen? Do you simply go to the buttons folder within the skin and delete them?I do not want weather, etc to appear. I basically only want movies and music on the start page.

[Twit]

Press pause/break to bring up the skin editor. Click the button you want to delete (it gets a line around it) then click the delete button in the skin editor.