Long startup in Windows 10 (update: related to network printers)

Help & Support
1

Ever since I began running W10 (clean install), Dopus takes an inordinate amount of time to initialize itself and become useful, i.e., ~2 minutes or so before I can launch it — but Windows File Explorer is available immediately.

Any ideas for a fix?

2

  • When does the slowdown happen? What is on-screen at the time?

  • Make sure Windows 10 is fully patched. A bug in some versions caused this with Opus and some other programs.

  • Make sure nothing in your Opus config is trying to talk to a network machine which doesn't exist. That can include things like buttons on toolbars where the icons are on a network path which is unreachable. (Things like that will normally matter more than more obvious things like having a network folder in the default lister when it opens, which is usually fine, although worth avoiding when testing for problems.)

  • You could try using Process Monitor to see what Opus is accessing during startup.

  • You could try manually generating a Task Manager dump during the slow-down, and sending it us.

3

The slowdown happens as the desktop comes up at boot time. Nothing is on screen except the desktop icons. If any networked items are causing this snafu, I don't know how to troubleshoot that.

Windows is patched. I'll send crash dumps via Dropbox.

4

Is everything else slow as well?

What happens if you don't start Opus until Windows is booted and has settled down?

Is it still slow if you disable all your network adapters in Windows and reboot?

5

As I noted in my first post, File Explorer is available immediately. If I wait until a couple of minutes after boot, Dopus is fine... I guess I want it to behave like File Explorer but it doesn't — maybe it can't?. Don't know about the network angle. I may have time to try that tomorrow.

I uploaded the dmp files to dropbox and sent a link.

6

On the Launching Opus / Startup page in Preferences, try clicking the Remove Startup Delay button.

7

Thanks for sending the dumps.

The delay has something to do with your default printer. Opus calls GetDefaultPrinter during startup, and it is taking forever on your system.

If you've set the default printer to a network printer over a slow connection or on an unreachable machine, that might be why.

GetDefaultPrinter usually returns immediately, but it seems there are cases where it takes a very long time. We'll look at moving that call on to a separate thread so it will only block things which actually need the printer later on and let the rest of the program continue. But I'd still recommend fixing the default printer to avoid the problem in other applications.

8

Interesting, I'll have a look at that since my printer is networked. Not sure how I can speed up the handshake or whatever goes on but maybe I'll stumble onto a solution.

Jon mentioned clicking the Remove Startup Delay button, which was something of a revelation. I didn't realize there were any user configurable startup parameters for Dopus and I have never, as long as I've used Dopus, checked Launch with Windows (or however it's worded). I will check that box and see if it makes a difference.

Thanks to you both for the help with this.

9

It could also be another printer and not the default one, although I'm less sure there. The dump shows the GetDefaultPrinter API in turn calls EnumPrinters which may be getting a list of all printers on the system (and presumably stopping when it finds the default one, although I can only guess at the internals of how the APIs call each other).

So if you have some old network printers in your list of printers, it could be them slowing things down rather than the default one, at least in theory.

10

There may be a legacy printer that was connected via usb before we switched the printer to ethernet/wifi. There are also a couple of print to pdf entries but I don't know if those matter.

Thanks again.

11

The PDF printers are probably fine, unless there's something wrong with the printer drivers that implement them, at least.

12

We've done that for the next beta, so you should find Opus starts faster from there on if Windows is still processing the printers slowly for whatever reason.

13

Thanks. This is the best response I've ever received from software support.

Where's the tip jar? :smiley:

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14

I hope you all know that even though windows desktop shows Windows itself the OS is still busy starting up.
Needs about 2 Minutes to be ready completely.

15

FYI, your printer fix did the trick for my slow Dopus starts. Thanks so much.

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