Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

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Grey DeMonstr
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Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *Grey DeMonstr »

Good day,
I'm using Total Commander for a long time already (since 2014), and had no problems with it. But last several months I'm using constant problems with all dialog windows - they opens very slowly, at least several seconds (2-10). It causes a lot of pain.
Window examples: New Folder (F7), Copy (F5), Find Files, literally everything.

What did I check:
  • Another PC - fail, issue reproduces on all my PCs (3 of them)
  • Clean config - fail, issue reproduces without any plugins
  • 32/64 bit version - fail, issue reproduces stably on all architectures
  • Check using Sysinternals Process Monitor - well, nothing suspicious here. Few config/registry requests, then long idle pause. Looks like totalcmd.exe does some internal work during this.
  • Update Total Commander to the latest 9.51 - no changes here.
  • Downgrade to the 6.56 - much better (1 second instead of 5) but still not perfect. The same is in the 8.01 version (1-2 seconds), so problems are crazy only in the 9.0+.

My current suggestion is that everything started after certain windows update (Licensed Win 10 everywhere, updates regularly) - may be some winapi call became very slow.

Alternative one (quite strange, but probably) if some network request is done during such procedure (e.g. license validation). I check without the license key - no difference though.

What else should I check? Any ideas? Some profiling may be? I'm professional software developer, so I'm ready to try any advanced methods.
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ghisler(Author)
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *ghisler(Author) »

I answered this also by e-mail:
Do you use the same virus scanner on all of them? Total Commander reads a lot of values fro wincmd.ini when opening dialogs with directory histories.

Solution:
Try excluding wincmd.ini from scanning in your virus scanner.

The location can be found via menu Help - About Total Commander.
Author of Total Commander
https://www.ghisler.com
Grey DeMonstr
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *Grey DeMonstr »

Not sure where to more convinient ot discuss. Nope, I have no virus scanners.
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Stefan2
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *Stefan2 »

Start TC temporarly for testing with a brand new setting file (wincmd.ini)

Copy this command in the command line box at the bottom of the TC window:
%COMMANDER_EXE% /I="%TEMP%\wincmdTEMP.ini"

Now test with this "(2) Total Commander"



 
Grey DeMonstr
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *Grey DeMonstr »

Stefan2, I checked it already. See "Clean config - fail, issue reproduces without any plugins".
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Dalai
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *Dalai »

Try TC in Windows Safe mode. If it's fast there, it's almost certainly some background program (this includes anti-virus software*), or the graphics driver.

*) Win10 includes Windows Defender. So although you think you don't run any anti-virus, you do. Unless you explicitely disabled it, but judging from your answer, I don't think this applies here.

Regards
Dalai
Last edited by Dalai on 2020-05-27, 17:09 UTC, edited 1 time in total.
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sqa_wizard
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *sqa_wizard »

Is your wincmd.ini located at a network share or is it on the local harddisk?
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Grey DeMonstr
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *Grey DeMonstr »

sqa_wizard wrote: 2020-05-26, 17:55 UTC Is your wincmd.ini located at a network share or is it on the local harddisk?
Surely it is on the local harddisk.
Dalai wrote: 2020-05-26, 17:10 UTC Try TC in Windows Safe mode.
Thanks for the idea. Works perfectly in the Safe Mode (with low resolution and without networking). Will investigate further.
I noticed the strange behavior: instantly after the reboot issue is not reproduced. I reboot my PCs quite rarely (may be once a month), so probably it worked well not because of the safe mode but because I just rebooted.

PS Windows Defender is disabled.
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HolgerK
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *HolgerK »

Grey DeMonstr wrote: 2020-05-26, 18:00 UTC I noticed the strange behavior: instantly after the reboot issue is not reproduced. I reboot my PCs quite rarely (may be once a month), so probably it worked well not because of the safe mode but because I just rebooted.
Sounds like a huge GDI or User object problem on your system.
- open "Task manager"
- switch to "Details" tab
- context menu of tab header -> "Select coloumns"
- activate "GDI objects" and "User objects"
- sort by these columns to identify the process which consumes a huge amount of these objects,
Any process which is consuming more than the usually few hundred objects?
- try to terminate the corresponding program and check the dialog problem again.

GDI and User objects are a limited resource per session and desktop programs needs a few of them to show dialogs.

Regards
Holger
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Grey DeMonstr
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *Grey DeMonstr »

HolgerK wrote: 2020-05-26, 22:09 UTC Sounds like a huge GDI or User object problem on your system.
Will check next time, thanks for the idea, but as for my experience, problems are much greater when handles leak as a lot of winapi calls just fail.
After a day of work dialogs are again opened with a delay, but small yet (1 sec). I will wait for a few days and take a look.
LionTech
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *LionTech »

I have been struggling with the same problem for many months and finally found a (drastic) solution. I noticed TC got slower over time. Restarting TC did not solve it. Restarting the system provided a temporary solution.

After some experimenting I came to the following conclusion: the Windows Update process is the cause (note, not the patches themselves)

When you disable automatic updates (and notifications) TC keeps running smoothly with a long system uptime (for a Windows PC, that is ;-). I disabled it using gpedit but a registry edit will work too.

Your mileage may vary but it worked for me.

Windows 10 Pro 20H2, TC 10.00 Beta 10
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Usher
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *Usher »

LionTech wrote: 2021-05-15, 10:33 UTC After some experimenting I came to the following conclusion: the Windows Update process is the cause (note, not the patches themselves)
Windows 10 Pro 20H2, TC 10.00 Beta 10
Windows Update may use at least one CPU core with 100% load. The process may work even several hours. MS devs claim that they somehow fixed that in new Windows 10 builds. Anyone can confirm it?
Last edited by Usher on 2021-05-15, 22:26 UTC, edited 1 time in total.
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LionTech
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Re: Dialogs are opened incredibly slow

Post by *LionTech »

That may be but I didn't notice any extraordinary CPU activity when the dialogs were redrawing slowly. That's what made it so frustratingly hard to find: no CPU, no Mem, no network or I/O spikes.
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