Odd delay before control panel, programs start in Windows 7

[wombatpete]

...and can/should I uninstall the SDK, btw?

 

[wombatpete]

Actually, I should say that - having set the registry delay to 1 - I exited Comodo and closed Opera... and there's still a palpable delay opening the control panel as a menu.
Any thoughts? Or am I chalking it up to the HDD?
Let me try doing that and opening a program...

 

[wombatpete]

Delay there, too. In each case, certainly, a bit shorter than it was, I admit.
Probably the HDD, then, right?

 

[cluberti]

Most likely. If you want to get a trace with Opera closed and Comodo removed, I can take a look. Otherwise, I'd focus on getting your hard disk "house" in order .

 

[wombatpete]

I'll do the trace - why not?!!!

Also, this message was left as a "tail" on the last page:

Fascinating. I would have thought there was something being queried that eventually just timed out, allowing things to continue. But I suppose not.
Thank you, sir.
I'll test the browser issue; that's easy enough.
The HDD was destined for upgrade, anyway.
What about the firewall/antivirus? Do you here have a recommendation on this? Is there a consensus?
Thanks again, it's the first actually answer I've gotten in a lot of searching over this week.​

 

[wombatpete]

OK, I did one trace, having exited opera and comodo (I'm not sure whether that really terminated all comodo functions, but we'll see).
And I first called up the control panel as a menu, and then called up openwriter.
They really were MUCH faster this time.
But let me post the file, just in case.
It's here: NewSlow.7z

 

[wombatpete]

As I reread this, I come back to this part:

cmdagent.exe is causing an inordinate amount of file I/O (specifically QueryInfo calls) and WMI calls during the time that the shell (explorer.exe) is querying the registry for CLSIDs to display information (and what MUI / language to use, etc) to display control panel items. This is approximately 5-6 seconds of delay - this is also exacerbated near the end with opera.exe's file I/O (at close to 100% of the total disk I/O time during this timeframe).
Lenovo's MessageCenter Plus takes 7.9 seconds to initialize once the control panel itself starts to load, which delays the load of the control panel. The control panel finishes loading once MCP loads in 0.3 seconds.

First of all, I'm wondering why the opening of the cntl panel calls up MessageCenter Plus. Is there an obvious logic to that and might it be avoided? It would explain the unchanged part of the delay.
And are you saying that cmdagent.exe is causing an inordinate amount of the file I/O & WMI calls BECAUSE of Opera? Or is this something into the cause of which we (ok, I) should be looking?
Thanks

 

[cluberti]

According to the new trace, it's still showing 5+ seconds to run the dllhost command to open the control panel, but specifically the dllhost.exe is running from wow64 (meaning you must have both 32 and 64bit control panel items). The 32bit control panel is causing part of the delay (it's much easier to see now, for what it's worth), although it also appears that your Intel graphics driver is loading a process every time you try to open it, and I'm wondering if *that* is the 32bit control panel item that is slowing that down. OpenOffice (in this trace) now opens in 5.7 seconds, which is quite good for an application that contains a java bin container.

Note that cmdagent.exe is still loaded and running, and while it is a part of the delay it doesn't appear to be actively attempting to do as much work as before. Ultimately, you still have three things at work here - slow disk access, Comodo is still slowing things down, and it looks like you might want to look at updating your Intel graphics driver and software. I cannot guarantee that updating the Intel software will help the control panel open, but I can at least confirm that's the last holdout, so to speak, in that arena. Also, for 3rd party software like antivirus, antimalware, firewall, etc, these all have what are called filter drivers - additional I/O drivers that sit on the network and/or disk "stack" and access all I/O requests to or from the disk or to or from the network (or both) so as to scan. The only way to get these to go away is to remove the software in question - simply disabling it does nothing to the filter drivers it has installed, and in some cases will cause no perceptable performance difference whatsoever.



As to your other questions, my recommendations are:

• Use the Windows firewall - it's lightweight, does a very good job of blocking traffic, and while it doesn't have all of the OCD configurations a lot of the 3rd party applications have, it's also far better performance-wise and isn't going to do things like this to your box.
• Use a lightweight (and free) A/V product, something like Microsoft Security Essentials or AVAST, and my recommendations are in that order. I prefer MSE because it is lightweight and gets out of the way, but some folks that like a bit more feedback may prefer AVAST. Pay antivirus in today's day and age isn't really necessary except for very specific situations, and most of these pay packages are heavy and slow (not all, but most).
• Consider whether or not you need all of those Lenovo add-on applications and services - they're not known for being fast or stable, so if you don't need one (or two, or three... ), uninstall. They're not helping anything, at the very least.
• Defragment *manually* on a regular basis, at least once a month. The inbox defragmentation task in Windows 7 is much better than no task at all, but if you're a heavy user of your PC it may not be sufficient. Given the way the disk "looks" in these traces, I'd suggest doing this at least once a month, maybe more frequently.
• Opera isn't the cause of the I/O in the first trace per se, but the flash control inside of it is. I don't use Opera, so I can't speak to how good (or poor) the flash control is for Opera, but it pretty much stinks for all other browsers so it's likely Adobe's code in Opera isn't so hot either. If you've viewed flash in your browser and notice performance issues afterwards, consider the possible source and close your browser sessions before looking elsewhere for performance issues.

 

[wombatpete]

A million thanks!!!!!!!!!!!

Cluberti, having done much of what you've suggested and played around with the services, the improvement is staggering.
Can't thank you enough!

I do wonder whether, since it's "fast enough," there's an issue or two here that could be resolved that I'm ignoring; I'd rather figure it all out and resolve them.. but I'm going to see whether I may be able to do that myself before bugging you further.

Thanks yet again for your help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[cluberti]

Fantastic .

 

[wombatpete]

Btw, what about uninstalling SDK?

 

[cluberti]

You can remove it, no problem. Just keep the Performance Toolkit installed in the off chance you may need it again.

 

[pirinto]

Sorry for resurrecting this old thread. I'm having the same issues as the original poster.

I also experience some odd delay when opening certain applications
Some applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, Steam now start with an extra delay. For example if I fire up Firefox I'll notice disk activity for some seconds and then nothing for 20-25 seconds. After that it will resume loading the application and start it as normal. The application responds fast after that so there's no lag whatsoever.

I've tried to uninstall these applications completely and reinstall. I then started them without any addons or profiles that might make it run slow. But I still get these delays. The system is otherwise responsive.
The hardware is fine and I've also tried to completely uninstall my firewall/antivirus/security suite and check if that was the issue, but it wasn't.

As I said this only concerns these three applications (to my knowledge).
Another thing is the OS, it's not Windows 7 but Vista 64 Business. I have made a post on the Vista64 forums but haven't got any reply nor help (this was a few weeks ago).

I've already prepared my computer with the performance toolkit so I can post my logs. If somebody is willing to help. I'd be more than happy to post them. As I said i've posted on the other forum and really hope I can get some help here.

 

[cluberti]

Post away.

 

[pirinto]

Post away.

Thank you!

Here's the file:
slow2.7z

I followed the instructions you posted on the first page.
after I ran:

xperf -on DIAG+DISK_IO_INIT+DRIVERS+FILE_IO+FILE_IO_INIT+FILENAME+NETWORKTRACE+PRIORITY+PROFILE+REGISTRY+SPLIT_IO

I started the one application after another (Firefox, Thunderbird then Steam) letting each one finish starting up before I fired up the others. I had no other applications running besides those from startup.

Also, I checked your system specs and I've got the same motherboard/RAM/processor combination as you. If it helps

 

[cluberti]

Interesting - all of your read time appears to go to a file called "I:\CESAR\STUFF\.DS_Store\Other\capture-2.avi" while opening any of the applications, which is the bulk of the ~70 seconds of time for opening Firefox, ~77 seconds when opening thunderbird, and almost 100 seconds when opening Steam. The applications themselves do not take up more than a few seconds of each of those time periods, so something running within the LocalSystemNetworkRestricted svchost is chewing up disk time (at almost 100%, but doing low-priority reads). Looking closer at the threads doing the read, it's coming from the sysmain.dll thread inside that svchost, which is SuperFetch/ReadyBoost. If you don't have a ReadyBoost key in that machine, try disabling the SuperFetch service for the time being to see if that changes the behavior at all.

 

[pirinto]

Interesting - all of your read time appears to go to a file called "I:\CESAR\STUFF\.DS_Store\Other\capture-2.avi" while opening any of the applications, which is the bulk of the ~70 seconds of time for opening Firefox, ~77

Hmm that's a years old file from when I had an old PowerBook G4 . The file is no longer important, I'm guessing deleting it won't solve the problem(?)

The applications themselves do not take up more than a few seconds of each of those time periods, so something running within the LocalSystemNetworkRestricted svchost is chewing up disk time (at almost 100%, but doing low-priority reads). Looking closer at the threads doing the read, it's coming from the sysmain.dll thread inside that svchost, which is SuperFetch/ReadyBoost. If you don't have a ReadyBoost key in that machine, try disabling the SuperFetch service for the time being to see if that changes the behavior at all.

Would it help if I rename the C:\windows\prefetch folder?
I'll try disabling the SuperFetch service and see what happens


------EDIT------------------
Disabling SuperFetch and ReadyBoost service didn't help at all

 

[cluberti]

I didn't think it would, but anything was possible. The other option I didn't specify was to delete the file and run a defrag against all your volumes (with defrag /u /v from an elevated cmd prompt) to update the superfetch information.

 

[pirinto]

I didn't think it would, but anything was possible. The other option I didn't specify was to delete the file and run a defrag against all your volumes (with defrag /u /v from an elevated cmd prompt) to update the superfetch information.

Unfortunately that didn't work. I did delete that one big file and ran a defrag. Should I do another trace and see which results it gives now. And post it here?

 

[cluberti]

Yes, indeed.