Startup Time Windows Vista 64

Help & Support
1

I have DOpus set to start when the system starts, but not to open any listers.

I have the splash screen set to display when DOpus starts.

Double-click on the desktop is disabled.

My problem is that it seems to take DOpus a loooonnnng time to start after everything else loads when the system is restarted.

If I exit DOpus completely, then restart it, it appears almost instantly.

No network shares or mapped drives were harmed in the posting of this topic. Neither are they involved at system start.

Is this expected behavior? Even more important - did I miss a FAQ entry? :slight_smile:

-Jeff

2

What doesn't take a long time to launch during the disk-thrashing Windows boot-up? :slight_smile:

But seriously, things worth looking at are:

  • External icons that Opus has to load during startup (e.g. if you open toolbars with lots of program icons on them, Opus has to load all of those icons out of the different programs' exe files).

  • Opus Icon Sets (Go to Preferences - Display - Toolbar icons and get rid of any icon set you're not actually using; each one gets processed during startup).

  • File Collections (It's done on a background thread but I think after startup Opus will scan file collections to make sure they have up-to-date details. So if you have lots of stuff in file collections, e.g. from left-over Find Results, then Opus might be triggering some extra disk activity.)

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. You could run Process Monitor and restart Opus, then see if there is any obvious activity that it does which could run slowly at boot (e.g. reading in data from loads of files/folders).

3

Apparently it was the File Collections. I didn't know they were scanned/validated/assembled at startup.

Thanks!
-Jeff

4

Perhaps this subject could someway be added to the FAQ, since I experience the same problems, either in XP and Vista. When the OS starts, it takes an incredible time for DO to appear, and Process Monitor show dopus.exe is constantly digging into the most exotic folders and registry places for IMHO no reason I know off.

I tried disabling my selfmade toolbar containing a lot of process icons, got rid of all but 1 icon sets, I have no file collections, etc... but the loading time, and when dopus is just open and idle in the background, Process Monitor shows it's constantly digging everywhere in the C:\ drive and the registry. :frowning:

5

That is probably a red herring, Devilder.

Opus monitors each drive for changes and the change events will be flagged in Process Explorer. My bet is it is those that you are seeing, due to files being modified by something other than Opus. If so then you can tell Process Explorer to ignore that class of event. Unless the changes correspond to folders Opus is looking at Opus will simply throw them away.

6

god i am tired of this usual stuff of people saying .... - hey our program doesn't do nothing .... something else does .... well no offense to you Leo, i have great respect but i say this is absolute nonsense.

I have a new, very powerful computer, i have disabled all programs and system services other than dopus, i have also disconnected my computer from the net, basically all that is running is windows and dopus... dopus on FACTORY settings. ... nothing added .... and it still takes at least a painful minute to start up ...

for me process explorer shows the same thing - dopus is all over the place - accessing stuff i never wanted it to access ...
i mean having a 64 bit OS means that stuff is supposed to be quicker ...

i like dopus and there are features i will miss like the custom buttons but i just can't get over the long startup times....

and i have also emailed gpsoftware with my opinion....

yet again .... :slight_smile:

7

It doesn't do that for me and I can't help you much if the only thing to go on is that "it's slow and all over the place."

And what is nonsense about me pointing out that directory change notifications are a red herring? They are, or at least should be. Unless you've investigated and found that they are the cause of the problem then I don't understand how you can say that is nonsense. Note that I never said Opus wasn't slow for your machine. I'm not calling anyone a liar. I'm just trying to point people in the right direction of what is and isn't worth investigating if they want to work out why Opus is slow to start on particular machines. Indeed, that led to a solution for Jeff (the root poster).

Not sure what else you expect of me or the forum in general. A magic fix?

8

I too have used Opus on the x64 version of Vista and had slow startup problems. However, I believe this to be a problem with Vista and not Opus.

My reasoning for this is that sometimes, and it is only sometimes, when Vista is first booted it can be very non-responsive. For example, Microsoft Outlook can sometimes take well over a minute to load.

I have a theory on this non-responsiveness, (but not tested it yet on Vista - I prefer XP), based on observations made on Windows XP. If I do a vanilla install of XP, boot times are very fast, less than 20 seconds from POST screen to being able to load Outlook which loads almost instantaneously.

However, and here's what seems to start slowing things down, if I go to the windows update site and opt to have the 'Get Microsoft Updates' downloaded and installed boot times start slowing down. How I get round this is turn off automatic updates and the computer is certainly more responsive than when automatic updates is set to on.

It seems that Windows Update doesn't affect the computer as much as Microsoft Update.

I'm not sure whether this is really the problem or a red herring, but it certainly seems to work.

9

It seems the problem might be with 64bit.From the day i am using it..startup time of Opus is very slow.I don't know why but still it it.

Btw my automatic updates are off

10

I've got both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista machines and Opus starts in about the same amount of time on both during a system boot (which is slowly, like every other program starts during or just after boot :slight_smile: because they are all fighting over the disk/CPU and because they have to wait for the system components they depend on, network connections, etc. to start/establish).

(I assume we're talking about startup during boot as that's what the thread is about.)

11

I've been using Dopus on Vista x64 for over a year, with no problems regarding slow startup. Having said that, I keep my system tuned overall, anyway.

With regards to starting almost instantaneously if you shut it down and restart - you'll find that's the case with just about any program. The first time you load it it takes a while, but subsequent reloads are quicker. It's just the way Windows works (caching dlls, prefetch etc). The only way to get a real comparison is to set Dopus NOT to load at startup, then start it manually.

12

Well that is true first startup takes little time and after that its faster then before.

13

Windows xp pro x86 when Dopus is not installed system is immediately ready (power of ssd) even if it have to start all the program that run with windows

I can click on my computer and it will open right away

When dopus is installed, not selected for startup or selected for startup and replaced explorer

If I click on my computer desktop will just freeze and if I click my computer in start that will also freeze and will stay that way until like 20 seconds passes and then it will computer is finally ready for use and it then popups dopus listers that because I clicked and sometimes it says that there was problem sending command blablabla error after that it works normally

WTF is dopus doing when system is starting I want dopus can't stand explorer, but its is so frustating because it locks up system for some time for unknown reason

14

What is the actual error message? Saying "blablabla" instead of the whole error message makes it hard for us to guess what is happening there.

Which version of Opus are you using?

Does it only happen if Explorer Replacement is on? Your sentence about when it does or doesn't happen is confusing so I'm not sure.

Which folder are you opening?

Do you have any drives mapped to network drives which are not available or which take a long time to become available after boot? Or anything else in your Opus config which points to drives like that?

15

This problem as I can remember has been in place since dopus 9.5

tried to install dopus 9.1 and it works fine

If I click on dopus itself it will open without wait but lister will be empty until the same time passes as I would just click on my computer and wait until opens

The problem applies to all folders usually I open my computer but tried to root of drive D: and C: same thing happens

The frame of dopus with all toolbars will only popup If I launch it directly and not clicking on shell folder such as my computer however lister will be empty until it unlocks shell that is about 20 seconds since I see desktop (boot time increased by 100%)

Will try disabling explorer replacement (never really tried before because I need it - I don't want other programs open explorer windows)
About that error message it only occurs if I clicked my computer many times sometimes does sometimes doesn't. Mainly it will happen when I click my computer from start menu and not the one on desktop, but again that's only when dopus is locking up shell upon boot.

Message said something about shell extensions (such as "Open in directory opus" shellex) I can't recall exactly what it said

Be right back rebooting system to recreate the error message

16

This is the error. It was hard to recreate had to boot several times.

When explorer replacement is off everything works normally shell doesn't lock up clicking on my computer opens drives in explorer, even when launching opus itself it also opens all listers with whatever is in folders right away.

No I don't have any network drives mounted or removable devices loaded

I'm running latest dopus 10.0.4.0, but like I said the problem was since dopus 9.5

17

I've seen that error message happen with Firefox when it takes too long to start up and open a link (e.g. because launching it ended up doing something else other than opening the webpage), so I think it's something Windows will display if it gives up waiting for a file or folder to be launched.

Let us know if turning off Explorer Replacement helps things. It sounds like, for some reason, the shell is waiting for Opus to start, but Opus is waiting in turn on the shell to do something, so nothing progresses until one of them gives up and lets the other continue.

It could be due to a shell extension installed by something on your system (you can use a tool like ShellExView to list them, but it can take some trial & error to track down problems with them) or it could be something in your Opus configration (try doing a config backup, then uninstall Opus + reinstall it to see if it happens with a default confg) or it could something like an unavailable network drive which Opus is getting stuck on (as mentioned earlier).

18

Just my experiences with DO's long-time-starts: I had same issue 2 or 3 times on different fresh installed sys with just a bunch a standard apps installed (Office, Adobe,...) and no network-drives, file-collections or other things that could cause this. I tried everything...DO default config, rebuilding config (yeah, that was funny!) and so on...

Unfortunately the only solution was setting up Windows new (but 100% same as the one before!) and it newer occured again on running system.

Some weeks ago I had some long-starts again after a normal boot, but this was an I/O error (thanks to HD-Tune) on a non-sys-hdd caused by a new but defect SATA-cable after moving PC into a new case!

19

@leo

I think you might be right, but I would like say that the following error is sometimes very hard to create actually I had to first click on directory opus app on desktop then on my computer icon (which have default action to open with dopus)

So I think the error is because of too many attempts to launch the dopus shell action while opening exact same folder. On another windows installation I had before there was similar error but that one said about "error sending command to desktop" something similar and it was more common

Of course if I just wait each boot until dopus unlocks shell then error will never appear.

That all shell locking is happening when explorer replacement is on

Like I said before when Explorer replacement is off and even if dopus is an item in shell so it is in context menu of every folder drives and special system folders still it wont lock up the system and dopus will actually come up on right away just like explorer when desktop appears and I right click explorer then select open in directory opus! no shell locking at all

About windows:

Because of this slow startup problems I got rid of old windows installation that had all programs I need and all mods for better experience and easier access to stuff

I installed new fresh install of windows xp, but not the original unmoded windows, becuase I added few programs like unlocker and modded dlls and tweaked its settings the way I like with nlite to make it look like windows 7 icons)

Ever since installing that "basic" thing I didn't do pretty much with it, because I'm careful and want the best performance out of it while having installed all programs and still be without cluster, so I even do a backup with acronis before installing anything so I can just step back anytime, its the only way to be sure of complete removal of junk files dopus and other program leave behind after uninstalling, even revo uninstaller can't remove everything unless you track installation with it, but that will only take care of files and registry that were made during install not those the program does after install.

Well dopus did not work on this fresh install of a bit modded windows so I will try Installing another virtual windows in vmware, but this time it will be official unmodded windows. If that will help then I will try to find out what is causing the problem.

Also my confing doesn't seem to be causing anything as same is happening with this current modded version of windows in vmware, same just like the hosting windows which had dopus installed yesterday and got restored, because of opus causing problems and wont install it again on host windows until it will work without locking up shell, instead I will do all the testing in vmware like I did with rest of programs ever since format.

Re installation doesn't work
default config doesn't work
explorer replacement off works, but cant work without it
Older versions of dopus seemed to work at first better, but at end both 9.1 and 8.22 do same thing like 10
Another file managers that also can integrate as replacement do not have any shell locking problems, but they are not even nearly as good as dopus.
Only thing I can do now is try that official xp sp3 fresh install in vmware with nothing but dopus

20

Just did the org install and it seems it works, but still if I click on my computer in first second when it is there my computer in explorer instead.

But then if I click it again like 1 second later it will open it in dopus

while on my modded windows that would never happen.. it didn't never open explorer instead it waited for dopus.

is dopus using some background service for shell integrating, because explorer replacement doesn't seem to be working right away on, but its is still better than locking up shell for 20 seconds

still I'm not sure what causes shell lockup on my host windows will try few things now.