Unexplained DO hanging

Help & Support
1

I have replaced my main office computer in the last two days with a brand new HP (i7). I have restored the image from the old Intel NUC to the HP. Most things have come across from the older machine quite well.

However, Directory Opus will open quickly, then hang looking like it needs to be restarted. After a restart it may or may not hang, usually not. After a reboot it always hangs.

It appears that DO is hanging while folder size is being calculated, and in this instance DO requires the folder sizing to be calculated to completion before it will run. I have not observed this action before, and since one pane of the default lister has about twenty websites in their folders for use by WinNMP local PHP server, calculating the folder sizes takes a while - even though the parent folder for websites is on the D (internal) drive. When that parent folder is replaced in the default lister by a much smaller folder, DO opens 'in a flash'!

An alternative expression of this behaviour is that clicking on the "Could not connect all network drives" notification, DO took at least 90 seconds to display "This PC". In fact, I had decided to close DO, and had clicked in a pane, when it appeared to crash, but instantly recovered and showed the lister. Was it stuck? Did my mouse action unstick it? Can't say. After DO had loaded the 'This PC' window, it recalled it, I suppose from a cache, with blinding speed.

I now check on my laptop for field work, and I see the behaviour I am used to seeing - namely that I can open folders and files while DO is continuing to calculate folder sizes. On the laptop, the website parent folder is on a USB stick, so is somewhat slower than when using an internal drive - but it still allows me to open folders and files while it continues calculating folder sizes.

So the issue is that, after relocation to new hardware, DO opens very snappily, but is unreasonably slow in becoming available, and in a way it never has in any other of our installations.

The system is Win 10 Pro 1903, 16Gb of ram, and 512Gb SSD, partitioned approximately equally into C and D drives.

To try to resolve this issue, I have:

  • Re-installed DO (V12.17) over the existing installation (same version) - no improvement

  • Used I-OBit uninstaller to uninstall the program, but leave the associated files, reboot and reinstall - no improvement

  • Used I-OBit uninstaller to uninstall the program completely, reboot then re-install, apply the licence, and restore the configuration - some improvement

  • Done a repair install of Windows (with comprehensive update checking), but DO remains virtually useless in an office because it opens quickly then hangs for an unreasonably long time - typically up to a minute.

Can I please get help to explain/resolve this unusual and disappointing behaviour?

2

Make sure nothing in the config you imported is pointing at network drives which no longer exist (or don't currently exist). There is a 30 second timeout in Windows if something accesses a network drive and the OS gets no response from the server. (We try to only access them on background threads, but there are still situations where they can tie up the UI thread.)

This includes Favorites, and also buttons on toolbars that point to such paths, or have icons that are on them, and anything like that.

The problem may also be caused by something else in your configuration. If you want to check that, the fastest way to get back to a default config is to uninstall Opus, then install it again. (Uninstalling wipes the config.)

Make sure you still have your config backup before doing this, but don't install it until you've checked if the problem still happens.

Shell Extensions which other software has installed can also cause problems like you describe:

Please don't use custom uninstaller tools unless absolutely necessary. They are more likely to cause problems than solve them.

3

Thankyou for the prompt response. Lots of suggestions there and I have to hit the road on Monday. Will explore the config file in Tuesday. All the network locations currently exist and are live, except the one that causes the norification mentioned, and that has never been a problem. The default config seems like a good place to start.

4

Have uninstalled and re-installed. In the default config DO took something greater than two minutes to run while displaying the C drive in two panes.

The program runs just like it should, after it takes this long time to read the directories. Tuesday will have to be looking at the other suggestions made in Leo's reply.

Making progress!

5

Have now noticed that one or two folders seem to hold up the process of opening. They have been moved to an external drive, but with no effect.

What is now clear is that, no matter what folders are used on the default lister, and therefore open on launch, DO takes about 75-90 seconds to open. This is seen as the program being unable to be shut down and hangs if a close attempt is made inside that time window - despite a clear and indexed display of, say, a small folder in each pane.

I tried the thumbnail cache instruction provided. I was surprised to see the REG_DWORD value set at "3", but zero, 1, or 3 makes no difference. We have no cloud connections except Dropbox, and that is an account of longstanding and has never been a problem before. Do not have K-Lite or other similar codec installations. We are using the latest 64 bit Notepad++.

Using ShellExView did not yield any useful insights.

So, after any big changes, and a say two reboots to get the whole system settled, the DO program takes a short time to load, but then a long time to fully index and begin operating normally.

Are there any other steps to try?

6

I would try removing that. It's the kind of thing that does cause problems. Any reference to a network server that doesn't always exist can potentially cause long delays.

During the freeze/slowdown, please create some Manually Generated Process Dumps and send them to us. We may be able to see what's happening from those.

7

Thank you so much. Have taken 7 dumps ending with one after the program had commenced running normally. They are in a folder DOpusDump zipped using 7z as requested. Compressed size is 349Mb.

Thank you once again!

9

Thanks for sending those in!

It looks like you have a Library which is pointing to a network folder (only barely supported in Libraries by Windows; Explorer tries to stop you adding network paths to libraries in most places), and that network folder is on a server which is not reachable.

That will potentially cause a lot of delays, especially if the folder tree is turned on and libraries are included in the tree.

If you fix the library so it no longer points to the unreachable network path, everything should be good again.

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10

Perfectamundo! Yes, there were three such paths.Two were paths to OneDrive which I don't use and so are presumably down to a Microsoft insertion, and one was to a video folder on an external optical drive that is no longer installed since the new computer has an internal optical drive.

With those removed, DO works like a dream. Thank you again!

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