Troubleshooting Safari: Slow startup solution

We previously noted a delay in Safari startup caused by a component of an APE producing broken aliases. Now MacFixIt reader Michael reports another solution for users experiencing unusually long startup times in Safari:

"The delay that is being experienced in OS X.3.2 with the startup, shutdown and bookmarks menu access can be tied to the "Favicons" cache which is found in ~/Library/Safari/Icons. This is not cleared when you select "Empty Cache" from the Safari menu.

"If you move all of the folders (they are labeled with two-digit numbers (EG: 00, 01, 02, etc)) located in the ~/Library/Safari/Icons folder to the trash, Quit Safari, empty the trash and then startup Safari you will notice marked startup. Also in you will not speed increase in accessing the bookmarks menu and shutdown of the application.

"Of course, different users will experience different results depending on the amount of bookmarks and the amount of "favicon" cache that is stored. I have found this to work in every situation that I have tried this fix.

"If it works for the end user and they wish for it to stay this way they should change permissions for the Icons folder so that Safari can not write to that folder. Just do a "get info" on the folder and change all permissions to no access.' Safari will not be able to write and the speed of the browser should be just fine."

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