ESTK and Windows 10 - a nightmare

[#1]

Dear all, I'm really desperate

In Windows 7 two months ago everything worked without such problems. W7 (now w10,1909) is on the first partition (C:); most programs (including FMs) are on H: (ESTK is on C, it can not be placed elsewhere). All partitions are on SSD, machine has 2.5 GHz.

Have now installed, re-installed FM-15.0.4.751 and ESTK-4 at least 3 times, but ESTK does not behave at all. Other FMs (12, 13, 14)  provide the same  misbehaviour for ESTK:

3 minute MP4 video : time from start. Watch out for cursor shape and window title colour
FM-15 is open and ready to receive the script output
0:03 Select FM-15 as target
0:11 Only now a now action is possible
0:19 Select the script file, it is open immediately
0:26 Click to start script
0:32 Script did its work, Hour glass and title "Not Responding"
0:47 ESTK window whites
0:48 Window title inactive (no colour), still no action possible
0:54 Click to start script again, but it does not work
1:00 ESTK window whites
1:07 Window title inactive (no colour), still no action possible
1:14 Click to start script again, but it does not work
1:15 ESTK window whites
1:28 Window title inactive (no colour), still no action possible
1:36 Click to start script again, but it does not work
1:49 Click to start script again, but it does not work
2:18 Click to start script again, but it does not work maybe need to click into FM again
2:30 Go to FM and click into it
2:37 Click to start script again,
2:50 Hey, the script starts working!
2:58 Script did its work, Hour glass and title "Not Responding"
3:12 Hour glass disappears, want to close ESTK
3:18 Window active again, can click X
3:20 ESTK window whites
3:25 Windows tilt message, I kill the ESTK task - see hereafter
3:33 ESTK task terminated

Final tilt reported by Windows Reliability Monitor

A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.
Faulting Application Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit CC\ExtendScript Toolkit.exe

Problem Event Name: AppHangB1
Application Name: ExtendScript Toolkit.exe
Application Version: 4.0.0.1
Application Timestamp: 515f2f21
Hang Signature: d6c5
Hang Type: 134217728
OS Version: 10.0.18363.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 8192
Additional Hang Signature 1: d6c55689310562521ab5587990a0ecc5
Additional Hang Signature 2: 3e18
Additional Hang Signature 3: 3e18e7499b5a4c3cbfb5bfddd2c5910e
Additional Hang Signature 4: d6c5
Additional Hang Signature 5: d6c55689310562521ab5587990a0ecc5
Additional Hang Signature 6: 3e18
Additional Hang Signature 7: 3e18e7499b5a4c3cbfb5bfddd2c5910e

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: dee42c732b41f02ad561883d9b080c65 (1540662345712798821)

I have not the slightest idea what is going on here! How I find out, what is ESTK doing while I can not issue another action (click on menu or button to initiate an action). Even closing ESTK is strange.

The whole .NET stuff was updated by Windows yesterday (2019-10 Cumulative Update for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8 for Windows 10 Version 1909 for x64 (KB4522742)).

ESTK is from https://helpx.adobe.com/de/creative-cloud/kb/creative-cloud-apps-download.html 

[#2]

Further tests show this:

• All the ESTK versions (CC = 4.0; CS6 = 3.8; CS5 = 3.5) behave similar. They all have these strange delay problems.
• Running the script from File > Scripts > Script Catalogue: script runs fine and can be started again alternately  after finishing its visible work.

IMHO the Gordian knot is somewhere between FM (have tested 12 … 15) and ESTK - or again some irregular DLL from Windows. I have no idea how to find the location of this knot.

[#3 · Accepted solution]

We can close the case "ESTK has long delays for everything".
Having installed FM-14 and the full environment on my wife’s PC (which is x32 and much slower than mine) and also tested in FM-12 on my machine, my conclusion is:

• Also on Windows 7 there are significant delays if to many of my scripts are installed. With just one (e.g. FMgraph) ESTK works as expected.
• The same observation is here on my machine in FM-12.
• Having open the data browser in ESTK it can be seen that this list is built up very often and hence takes much time. This is clearly a result of the many functions, variables etc in my script packages. For example, in FMcalc we have 11 modules, comprising 208 function with a total of about 2600 code lines (+ 1500 comment lines.
• My impression that everything was OK on WIN-7 must come from the fact, that during development of the scripts (using ESTK) I had only one of the script packages - the one to be tested - in Startup. So much about the reliabilit of my brain-memory…

TCS support has helped me much in finding this explanation.