Slow boot time and High CPU usage

Hi,

I just installed (and purchased) a copy of TLB and think that it's great. But I do have one quite serious problem/bug:

Sometime when I log in explorer.exe takes up 100% CPU and it will take about 5-10 minutes to bring the desktop icons onto the screen. After that system performance is as expected. Uninstalling TLB brings the login speed back, the re-installing slows it down again. I've even just re-installed the entire system to see if that would resolve the issue.

My system is:
AMD 1.5G Athlon
512MB RAM
Radeon 7000 32MB VGA card
80GB IDE hard drive

...so quite enough to run a toolbar at some speed.

Has anyone else had any similar problems?

Thanks in advance,

Tom Wesley

My hardware specs are all considerably less than yours, and I've never experienced this problem. Could we have some more information about your software environment? OS version, shell version, TLB version, plugin versions, etc. Also, what other programs are set to run at startup? Maybe there's a conflict of some type.

You can. I use WinXP with all the current updates installed, no unreleased hot fixes.

Norton AntiVirus 2003 with latest updates, but I have tried without this installed, same results.

I just did an online update, so the TLB version is current. The plugins installed are Mail Checker, CPU tracker and weather monitor, although I have to say it doesn't seem to matter if these are installed or not.

I also have one of those pain-in-the-arse keyboards with multimedia buttons (a Logitech wireless thing), so the software for that runs in the background.

The odd thing is that 60-70% of the time it all works fine. Just the rest of the time it's a little silly...

Any hints, questions or strange rituals welcome.

Tom

There are can be some reasons:

1) You have too many shortcuts in the toolbar folder
How to check up: Try to create new TLB toolbar with one or two button only and restart computer
How to solve: You can move some of big menus into Virtual Folders. Virtual Folders are loaded its content only on first open. So you can save some time.
Note: True Launch Bar supports unlimited number of buttons and menu items but if you have too many (some hundreds) you can get slow boot time.

2) Slow boot time can be results of working the AntiViruse software. Many AntiViruse have files monitors that check every file when system request this file. So when TLB reads shortcuts AntiViruse take many time. Try to disable AntiViruse to be sure that it cause the problems.

Also it can be the combination of these two reasons.

I wouldn't consider that I have lots of items on my menu though, although I will try some virtual folders and see if that solves my problems. I'll post back with my findings later today.

I've also attached a shot of the toolbar I'm having problems with.

Tom

I have just tried creating virtual folders and can confirm that the problem still exists. Is there some debug build of TLB I can use to attempt to find a resolution?

Tom

OK, I'm not going for the longest thread here, honest, but I have solved the problem.

It seems to be a BUG in the most recent email checker plugin. When multiple accounts are defined my PC just takes ages to boot. When just a single account is defined, no problem.

I'll be happy to provide information if this bug proves to be hard to reproduce.

Thanks for your time all, look forward to the outcome.

Tom

If that is the case then check the mail accounts CONNECTION box - what is it set for?

If you are connecting by LAN then you might have a wrong settings in there.

I had a small problem which was fixed by setting all mail accounts to LAN connection (a couple were set to use IE settings)

Very funny you should say that as my connection is a cable modem with Windows fooled into thinking LAN. It works perfectly by setting them to LAN rather than IE Settings.

Funny that no one knew this though, seems strange. I would be very interested in taking an observers view of the source code. I'm a programmer myself, and would value to possible input of 'the team' on my own code, with the obvious reverse applying.
(that probably including taking the piss)

Tom

Your post doesn't read very easily.

Is the problem fixed? If so what was wrong and what did you do to correct it.

A little more clearer explanation so others can benefit if they have similar problems.

Connecting via LAN as opposed to using IE settings seems to have fixed a problem I was having, though I didn't know it was caused by mail monitor. Every time I would boot and at sporadic intervals thereafter, I would get a message stating something to the effect of "Can't connect to the internet" with the reply options of Work Offline or Try Again. I'd click Try Again and it would go away for a while, but eventually come back. My mail monitor is set to check email every minute, and the messages weren't anywhere near that frequent. After setting mm to connect via LAN (I connect to my cable modem through a router), mm immediately reported that I had 3 new messages, all of which were sent yesterday. I never got the round red x overlay telling me that mm couldn't connect, so I had no reason to suspect it wasn't working right. I recently ran WinXP's network wizard becasue I was having trouble sharing files over my LAN. Shortly afterward I started getting those messages. Hope some of this info helps isolate this bug, if it is one.

That's the same problem I had. Setting all acounts to LAN fixed it. I am not sure what IE settings does.

Sorry, it had been a long night.

The problem seemed to be down to having multiple mail account defined and enabled in a single mail checker button. They were fine it none were enabled, but it just doesn't work if you enable more than one. The solution seems to be to set the connection type for them all the LAN. This has improved my boot speed back to normal, but I'm not sure of the affect this will have on people using a dial-up connection for example.

Hope that is a little clearer.

Tom

Thank you for bug investigation!

I'll try to fix it in the next version of mail monitor.

So for dialup users I recommend to use connection type as MODEM. For all other users LAN.