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Known Participant
October 25, 2010
Question

FM 7.0 suddenly began extremely slow startup loading "core"

  • October 25, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 792 views

Hi,

We're running FM 7.0p578 on Windows XP SP3, in a networked environment.  Writers have FM installed on their workstations, working on files that are on a network file server.

About a month ago, several of us began to notice intermittent, extremely slow startups.  What used to take about 10 seconds, sometimes now hesitates and takes upwards of one or two minutes, maybe even more.  The apparent hang is during loading of "core", as shown on the splash screen indicator that shows component names as they load.

We have the TimeSavers and TableCleaner plug ins installed.

I've tried changing the default printer to Adobe PDF, but that didn't help.  FM checking of Adobe Online is turned off ("never"), so it's not that.  I don't believe anything was changed on the file server, but I can't be sure about that. But if anyone has seen such a hang in the past, maybe your experience can help us.

Thanks very much.

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    2 replies

    Inspiring
    October 26, 2010

    I'd bet on interference from your AV program(s); possibly slow network reaction if you're loading a common file (like a dictionary) that's on a network device.

    Try toggling your AV program off to see what happens.

    Also, do it just after a reboot without other applications running, to eleminate the possibility of interference.

    Known Participant
    October 27, 2010

    That's a good thought, Art, thanks. Unfortunately, we have corporate AV

    system (TrendMicro OfficeScan), that is installed on all of our

    workstations, but we can't turn it off or pause it, or even check the

    logs (I just tried).

    And since I wouldn't want to defeat the program until I had a truly

    repeatable case of the slow startup. It's still fairly capricious, as

    far as I can discern at this point.

    I might ask our corporate systems personnel, but it's an offshore

    corporate "help" desk, and in my experience the level of sophistication

    has been along the lines of "let's reformat your hard drive and see if

    that fixes it".

    The next time the hang happens, I'll see if I can get the OfficeScan

    console to open to see if anything shows up when I mouse over the icon

    in the notification area of the task bar. I didn't even think of that,

    so thanks very much. If I find out anything, I'll reply to the list

    again.

    Thanks!

    -- garyZ

    Jeff_Coatsworth
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 26, 2010

    So it's happening before you actually start opening any FM files, right? Does it seem to get stuck at one particular spot? Is there any message appearing on screen at that point? Some users of higher versions have reported problems that involved a corrupt Linguistics file that when they renamed it, freed them up.

    Known Participant
    October 26, 2010

    Hi Jeff,

    It does always seem to get stuck at the same spot in the load sequence,

    but all I can really tell is that it is when "core" is loading. No

    other files have been opened, and there's not even a FrameMaker window

    open yet - just the splash screen hanging there with a 3/4 finished

    progress bar.

    One thing that is strange is that it is an intermittent problem. About

    half the time or a little more it happens, and the wait is minutes for

    the load to continue. Other times, it is just a brief pause, and

    nothing unreasonable. I've tried to note any pattern, but so far I have

    not.

    -- garyZ

    Jeff_Coatsworth
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    October 26, 2010

    What happens if you enable the Console window to be present and then try starting up again? Does that give you any clue as to what's going on in the background?