Performance problems in Find - It's really slooooooooowwww........

cpevsner · Post by **cpevsner** » 2002 Apr 05, 19:41

I feel churlish complaining about such a great program, but here goes. Three problems with 2xExplorer in a Win2K Pro SP system:

(1) Tools|Find Files is incredibly slow. It takes 2-5 seconds to traverse each folder, even with a non-wildcard name. It doesn't make any difference if the drive being searched is local or network. This is 100% reproducible.
(2) Intermittently, changing folders in either pane takes a long time to refresh the pane -- again, 2-5 seconds. This is reproducible about 75% of the time. Doesn't seem to depend on the folder contents.
(3) After a Move/Copy, panes sometimes don't refresh automatically, I have to hit Ctrl-R. And although I have View|Options|Auto-Resort turned on, it doesn't.

It sounds like all these problems are related and likely a single root cause, but what is it??

Notes:
* I'm running version R7XX "Cartmann", build 1.3.1.7
* Machine is a Dell Inspiron 7000 running Win2K Pro SP2, 192MB RAM, 4GB hard drive with plenty of space.
* None of these problems are present in (ugh) Windows Explorer.
* I have tried all the usual stuff (turning off Norton virus scanning, turning off ZoneAlarm), to no effect.
* This is a pretty workaday machine; no programming tools are installed, just Office 2000 and other tools like photo editors.

I would very much appreciate any advice or suggestions! Also, am I the only one out there having these problems?

Post by **nikos** » 2002 Apr 06, 15:33

am I the only one out there having these problems?

i definitely hope so!

-- I haven't heard this before

what you describe suggests that there's something wrong with FindFirstFile, the windows API 2x uses to read & search for folders.

sounds wacky; it would really help if you figured out what are the circumstances in those 25% of cases where it works ok. Are we talking NTFS or FAT32 formats?

the search tool can get really slow if you have the "find text" option checked, since every file needs to be opened & scanned

finally, for the refresh problem take a look at faq# 2. Put simply, 2x will refresh all (most) actions originating from within the program. The auto-sensing fails for network drives

cpevsner · Post by **cpevsner** » 2002 Apr 08, 16:02

Hi Nikos, replies below:

>>what you describe suggests that there's something wrong with FindFirstFile, the windows API 2x uses to read & search for folders.
<<
Assuming that's the case, how do I repair this? BTW, other Windows search functions (like Start|Search|Files) seem to work fine.

>>Are we talking NTFS or FAT32 formats?<<
NTFS

>> "Intermittently, changing folders in either pane takes a long time to refresh the pane -- again, 2-5 seconds.": it would really help if you figured out what are the circumstances in those 25% of cases where it works ok
<<
OK, I studied it carefully, and here's what I found:
* It is definitely NOT content-related. Doesn't matter how many or few files are in the folder, or what file types they are.
* The FIRST time I navigate in a pane, it is fast. EACH TIME THEREAFTER, it is slow, even if I simply jump up and down between parent and child folder. If I leave 2xExplorer for a while and working in other applications, when I come back, the same thing happens; first navigation is fast, subsequent ones are slow.

How strange is that???

>>the search tool can get really slow if you have the "find text" option checked, since every file needs to be opened & scanned
<<
It is unchecked.

>>finally, for the refresh problem take a look at faq# 2. Put simply, 2x will refresh all (most) actions originating from within the program. The auto-sensing fails for network drives
<<
Problem happens on local drives as well as network drives.

Thanks in advance for your assistance!!

excession777 · Post by **excession777** » 2002 Apr 09, 07:31

Just thought I would add my comments:

Windows XP Pro has no problem with 2xExplorer and Find files.
Windows NT 4.0 has no problem with 2xExplorer and Find files.

None of the artifacts you see are happening on my two workstations.

(Celeron 500, 128MB memory, networked drives for all data, 10mbps BNC network too, dammit).

Dac

Post by **nikos** » 2002 Apr 09, 10:15

that's the magic of windows programming; most people haven't got problems, but a few do and it's up to me to figure out why. Guaranteed to keep life interesting

the short version is that i have no clue why you (cpevsner) are experiencing this weird behaviour. 2x doesn't do any "caching" of contents. If you get out and back in the same directory it's all the same for the program.

If you have any programming experience, I would recommend downloading and trying the debug version, as explained in support page

You can also try setting bUsePlainIcons value to 1 as explained in registry.txt (i'm really getting desperate here...)

cpevsner · Post by **cpevsner** » 2002 Apr 10, 02:11

Nikos,

I downloaded the debug version, and I almost instantly got two assertion errors. I will email you the screen shots.

One error comes from clicking on the Network icon at left.
Another error comes from double-clicking on a folder in the center pane.

Hope this helps!!

(By the way, changing the bUsePlainIcons value in the registry had no effect.)

mpl22 · Post by **mpl22** » 2002 Jun 24, 20:16

Hello,

I thought I should mention that I'm experiencing some of the issues mentioned in this thread. Find Files is quite slow, and changing folders is slow as well. Cpevsner's description of symptoms is spot on. I haven't noticed the refresh problem, yet... but I am a new user. Has anyone else had problems or solutions?

I downloaded the debugging executable, but it failed to start, complaining about the absence of 'mfc42d.dll'. A quick newsgroup search suggested that this is a debugging DLL that would not normally be present without Developer Studio or something similar. Am I missing something?

Here's my version info...

2XE Product Build: 1.3.1.12
OS: NT 5.00.2195 (Windows 2000 Professional, SP2, up to date critical fixes from windowsupdate)

Quoting Cpevsner:
1) Tools|Find Files is incredibly slow. It takes 2-5 seconds to traverse each folder, even with a non-wildcard name. It doesn't make any difference if the drive being searched is local or network. This is 100% reproducible.
(2) Intermittently, changing folders in either pane takes a long time to refresh the pane -- again, 2-5 seconds. This is reproducible about 75% of the time. Doesn't seem to depend on the folder contents.
(3) After a Move/Copy, panes sometimes don't refresh automatically, I have to hit Ctrl-R. And although I have View|Options|Auto-Resort turned on, it doesn't.

Post by **nikos** » 2002 Jun 25, 14:59

i'm running w2000 SP2 as we speak without any problems

if you send me a list of all your running processes (second tab in the windows task manager) i may be able to locate something you're running which is deleterious to 2x. Are you using an administrator or plain user account?

mpl22 · Post by **mpl22** » 2002 Jun 25, 18:35

if you send me a list of all your running processes (second tab in the windows task manager) i may be able to locate something you're running which is deleterious to 2x.

I found it. I was running Folding@Home 2.15 (I think, maybe 2.18) and 2x stopped having problems if I killed it. Folding@Home 3.01 is available. I've installed it and it seems to get along better with 2x.

Are you using an administrator or plain user account?

Power User.

Sorry to bother you, I'd have done that before if I suspected. 2x is really nice work. Thanks for writing it.