To be sure, I didn't have issues with the speed of Bridge itself.
It was that after it installed, and then run, it caused the previously mentioned hiccups(mainly that FF stopped responding .. actually Windows stopped! .. and that it caused the desktop icons to flicker as tho the screen was dying/flickering.
I only have about 6 icons, as the desktop is primarily empty an black space image of the moon, so the screen was fine and the desktop image was fine .. icons flickering.
So it sounds like the cache is getting full, and or not updating.
One thing you can do if you're on Windows 10:
if purging the cache doesn't help, which it may or may not, remembering that it's not the images themselves, nor the actual thumbnails that tell the program how to render .. it's really the XML file.
Can't help with the location of the sidecar files tho.
BUT ... what you can do to 'reset' Bridge to start again is delete the directory under AppData that relates to Bridge.
So in Win10(dunno the location on earlier versions of Windows): Go to C drive, look for Users and then <yourname> ... whatever logged in name that your PC uses. eg. for me it's Arthur .. so C:/Users/Arthur.
If your install of Windows is not on the C drive then go to it's storage location .. this info assumes Windows is on C:\
In Users/Yourname you see an AppData folder. This also assumes that hidden files are set to be viewed. If you can't see AppData folder, up in Windows Explorer go to the View tab and look for the hidden files tickbox, and make sure it's ticked to show these hidden files.
The AppData folder will be slightly translucent, or semi greyed.
If you get to this point, inside the AppData foler are three folders. The ones you want are Local and Roaming. Nothing of interest to us in the LocalLow folder.
In both the Local and Roaming folders will be folders named Adobe
Inside these Adobe folders may be the folders to Bridge and ACR and whatnot.
If not, I'd say just work on the Adobe folder contents directly.
Assuming your profile name is
Geoff on your Win10 PC, then the folder(s) you want to look into will be C;\Users\Geoff\AppData\Local (and Roaming)\Adobe\(whatever else in here).
Here comes the 'hard part' .. delete the folders pertaining to Bridge, or if there is no Bridge specific folder, then delete the contents of the Adobe folder.
Trouble I had doing this was that CC as a service is running all the time(ie. you can't
stop it) .. and so there are some active files in these folders that can't be accessed, so you get a warning that so and so file can't be deleted .. I just skipped this, and just press skip until it continues to delete as much stuff as it allows.
Sounds a bit serious or perilous to delete 'system' files .. but it's not.
All this does is reset the program in question.
that is; if you delete the entire Adobe folder in AppData(both Local and Roaming) all you do is basically reset any installed Adobe software to a state close to freshly installed.
Note that in those two folders in AppData you will also find many folders/files of programs you may have long since removed!.
There are some programs that store all your data in this directory, so not recommended to delete stuff like an email client software folder out of here, as you will lose all your data(ie. stored/saved/archived emails).
Other than saved data, like the emails example above, you can actually safely delete the entire content so the Local and Roaming folders in totality and not really affect your computer and it's data.
So like the Adobe folder contained within, I regularly manage this location myself.
Nikons' software is just as blaoated in many ways and it stores thumbnails in cache in this area too.
I have a shortcut in my quicklaunch bar to AppData for this purpose!
After a very long time of operation,
Nikon's ViewNX2 can become overburdened with it's own thumbnail cache too, I've had near on 6Gb of thumbnails in there at one point.
So navigate to it's folder in there, delete and done. VNX2 back to normal. A couple of times I've had a weird situation where the thumbnail shown(in the film strip) is not the image in the main window! ... delete thumbnails and VNX2 settings in Appdata .. all good again.
This method of management is actually an easy way to 'reinstall' software if it bugs you in any way. Delete the appropriate AppData stuff .. program issue usually solved.
Note that this is no guarantee to fix any issue .. eg. if there is just some bug in the way software work or intercommunicate amongst themselves.
And, be sure if this is attempted, that you're sure that the data is either backed up in some way, or that you're sure you want it gone.
eg. I use Thunderbird for my email client, and if I delete the AppData entry for Tbird, I lose all my saved emails, and settings.
Note this also works the other way around too:
Lets say you want to '(re)install' some software, which isn't uncommon .. maybe onto a new PC, and lets say in this case Adobe.
You backup the contents of the AppData entries for each program on the current install. .. eg. to USB drive or whatnot.
Now you want to install to a new PC, but can't be bothered going through the tedium of getting al your settings and or data going again, and you want it instantly and now!
Once the new install is made, prior to running the program, transfer the contents of the required AppData folder into the new install AppData location(making sure that each is the right stuff) .. and your program should be set up just as it was on the last install.
I do this for Tbird(in fact there's a small backup program for Mozilla software that does the exact same thing!),
Nikon software, Firefox and whatever else (can't think now).
Sorry for the long reply, but if you don't have any luck using the prefs in Bride itself, I'd say just do the above to 'refresh' Bridge to a new state.
You won't lose Bridge, nor any of the actual image files, all you do is reset it to a new install position .. which means the window will be back to default .. if you have changed it to your liking. Also thumbnails(which is the point of this exercise!) will all need to be rebuilt again, so it could take time.
If, after doing something like the above you still have the same issue, then nothing can be done about it, and it's more than likely an incompatibility issue between the current version of the programs.