Selected Files & Folders Colors AND Slow Loading

Two issues since upgrading to version 10:

  1. Cannot customize colors for selected files & folders. Regardless of what color(s) I select, after clicking "APPLY" there is no change.

  2. After Windows loads, the initial window opening for Dopus is noticeably slower than with previous versions.

I'm using a fairly high end system running Windows 7. These issues did not occur with version 9.

Thanks in advance for any input.

  1. Turn off Preferences / Display / Options / Use visual style to draw items (Vista/Win7 only, overrides background colors).

  2. See this FAQ (or install the latest beta, link in my sig, if you are using 10.0.0.0).

BTW, please ask one question per thread.

Leo,

Thanks so much for the prompt response. Sorry about asking multiple questions in one post - won't happen again.

  1. Thanks - that did it.

  2. Not sure why you pointed me to that particular FAQ. There is no undue cpu usage by any process - the app is simply slower to load the first time after the system boots to Windows (it's fine on subsequent openings). I did upgrade to the latest beta and it took probably 6-8 seconds for the app to start the first time. I don't know if that's an improvement over 10.0.0.0, but it's certainly not a major issue, just a minor annoyance.

Anyway, thanks again for the great response time.

Allan

If there is undue slowdown, and it's not just because the system is overwhelmed during boot (while launching lots of other things), it may be due to a file (or files) in the folder you're opening during startup, which is what the FAQ goes into. (Easy way to test this theory is set Opus to open a completely empty folder at startup.)

If it's not that then I expect Opus is waiting on some OS component to become available during boot before it can continue. (e.g. Silly example, but if you had a toolbar icon that had to be loaded off a network drive, and the network drive wasn't ready yet, that'd cause a delay.) Not sure what would be different in v9 vs v10 there, though.

Nope, none of that. The opening lister is the root of c: (as it was with previous versions) and the delay occurs regardless of how long I wait after starting the system. Again, not a big deal - just a little annoying. The color issue was more important to me.

Just out of curiosity though, when you first boot up and then open Dopus, is the initial response time the same as subsequent ones for you?

By default, Opus runs in the background once started.

Not sure how long a delay you are seeing but a short delay on first start is normal. If it's very long then that isn't normal, and could be a number of things. (e.g. Toolbars with hundreds of icons loaded from other programs will take a while to load all those icons the first time.)

Yeah, I'm aware of the typical issues that can cause an app to load slowly (I'm the admin at one well known Windows support site and on staff at several others) and I assure you that's not the cause. Again, there is nothing different since the upgrade other than the upgrade itself. And no, it's not a huge delay - as I mentioned above the first start is probably around 7 or 8 seconds and then after that it's instantaneous. But as long as you're telling me that a short delay isn't abnormal for the first start that's fine.

Anyway, I've certainly taken up enough of your time with this and you've been more than gracious with your replies. Thanks again.

Allan

7 or 8 seconds seems like quite a long time. Might be worth using Process Monitor to see what dopus.exe is up to during that time. That might shed some light on it.

Will do.

the viewer plugins can take some time to load. i think even unchecked plugins are loaded automatically, and some load additional libraries.

I can't speak for 3rd party viewer plugins but the ones that ship with Opus only take a fraction of a second to load.

Plus one for slow loading - I was just about to post this same question. The first load takes between 6-9 seconds on a i7 system when absolutely nothing else is running. Close and reopen is instant. If I don't use DOpus again for a while, the slow load happens again. Loading version 9 was instant at any time.

Got any toolbar icon sets you don't use? Delete 'em as they can slow down startup.

Probably - but nothing new since 9, in my case. It's definitely a 10 thing.

Probably? Why not spend 10 second and check.

Preferences -> Toolbars -> Icons.

It might solve the problem, too.

"Probably" means I have no idea what might constitute an excess of icons. I have always had around 25-30 on 3 toolbars, which is what I had in 9 and what I want/need for Opus to work my way. I've seen some screen shots posted in here that make Opus look like an icon porcupine, and by comparison my config is very lean. Trying to establish whether getting rid of 2-3 possibly non-essential but desirable icons seemed pointless, so I tackled things the long way round. FWIW for anyone else with the problem, this is what solved the loading speed issue for me.

After wondering if restoring a full replacement configuration saved from 9 might have been a factor, I decided to uninstall DOpus before doing any further testing. I ran a registry clean to make sure any dross had been removed, then reinstalled. (The reg clean turned up many DOpus-related errors, no idea if any were of any significance on topic.) After that I configured my preferred (standard) set of icons and toolbars, listers et al from scratch, even added several I didn't have before for good measure. I then left Opus closed for an hour or so - after which length of time loading would previously have been very slow. The load after all of the above was instant, as it should be and as it was on v.9. Previous loads were taking between 6-15 seconds at the extreme end, average 7-8. So I saved that config then again loaded up a full replacement from v.9. I still have that running, and so far no slow loading whatsoever. Whichever of these measures was effective is beyond my limited knowledge, I just know it's "fixed", and very happy I am about that too.

After all of the above - typed last night - I decided to overload Opus, on the 9 configuration. I opened every toolbar and randomly crammed icons on every one - beyond porcupine, the entire Opus window was filled. I waited overnight and this morning Opus loaded that mess instantly. I think therefore it's fair to conclude that while an excess of icons might affect a slow system - I can't say - it has no impact whatsoever on loading speeds on mine. (Win7 HP x64, i7 920, 2.67GHz, 4G.)

I mean icon sets as defined in Prefs - Toolbars - Icons, which come packaged as .dis files.

Some of the .dis files on the forum take several seconds to load, it turns out. If you've installed a few of them they'll really slow down start-up times. (Yesterday I wrote some changes for a future version that will make that problem go away.)

Lots of icons loaded from external sources can also cause some slow-down, but only if you have a huge number of them. A handful is unlikely to, unless they're within .exe or .dll files and reading the icons from those files causes anti-virus software to take a long time scanning the files. (Most a/v software should not do that just to load an icon, though.) Icons on network drives could also slow things down, of course.

It may not have been icons at all in your case; they were just one idea that came to mind, after seeing that solve the problem for someone else.

Oh, I see what you mean - I misunderstood. No, I hadn't added anything to those sets. So "something else" was to blame for me! Who knows? Just glad it's gone. Thanks, Leo.