Very slow loading at times in Windows 7

[jamiedolan]

Hello;

I use Filezilla in Windows 7 on a i7 2.8 with 8gb of ram. Most of the time it works wonderfully. However, at times, it will be extremely slow to load, taking a minute or more, and sometimes even longer. During this time the i/o activity on the hard drive is very high.

I read old bug reports where people discussed this issue, and one cause was network drives for some reason. I currently do not have any network drives mapped to this computer. If you have any suggestions or things you would like me to try, please let me know.

I currently have all real time / active virus / malware scanners disabled (though my system has been recently checked), as I found these did highly impact the performance of many of my programs, even of this fast computer.

Thank You for any suggestions;

Jamie Dolan

[botg]

Can't reproduce.

[boco]

What is the configuration state of your Superfetch and search indexer service? Another possibility is that a BootOptimization or automatic Defragmentation is running when Windows becomes slow.

[jamiedolan]

What is the configuration state of your Superfetch and search indexer service? Another possibility is that a BootOptimization or automatic Defragmentation is running when Windows becomes slow.

I've not changed any settings for superfetch, do you think I should try running with it disabled? As to a search indexer, I do have Google Desktop installed, but I had this problem prior to installing Google Desktop.

When this has happened, I've checked and I don't see any optimization / defragmentation type of processes running. The computer looks to have plenty of open resources and other programs launch in a normal amount of time.

Thanks
Jamie

[boco]

I've not changed any settings for superfetch, do you think I should try running with it disabled?

No. By default both Prefetch and Superfetch tasks are running. When Superfetch does its job there will be heavy disk activity for a moment. That's why I mentioned it. It's a possibility, I've heard of some people experiencing system slowness while it runs.
(If your WEI is 6.0 or greater, the Superfetch feature is disabled).

As to a search indexer, I do have Google Desktop installed, but I had this problem prior to installing Google Desktop.

When an indexing of files and directories is running, there's heavy disk activity. Note that Windows search includes an indexer of its own. Maybe you even have both running at the same time?

When this has happened, I've checked and I don't see any optimization / defragmentation type of processes running.

I just mentioned it because Windows 7 contains an automatic defragmentation service which runs regularly. Again, some people had problems with it.

Heck, it could even be that your HDD is slowly dying. Even before bad sector develop, the performance of the thing may drop considerably. Note that the age of a hard drive has nothing to do with its possible state, it can die any time.

[jamiedolan]

(If your WEI is 6.0 or greater, the Superfetch feature is disabled).

I think I am at a 5.9 due to my slower 1TB hard drive, otherwise, I think the rest of my system is closer to mid 7. I've been tempted by the thought of getting a SSD as the prices come down.

Maybe you even have both running at the same time?

I do have it set so that Google indexer takes over and replaces the system indexer. Google is also "Suppose" to be resource friendly and suspend it's indexing while a person is using the computer.

Heck, it could even be that your HDD is slowly dying. Even before bad sector develop, the performance of the thing may drop considerably. Note that the age of a hard drive has nothing to do with its possible state, it can die any time.

Anything is possible; A few weeks ago when I was first trouble shooting this being slow and FireFox crashing; I did do the full check disk for errors thing where you reboot and let it scan for 5 hours and it was all good just a few weeks ago. (I have a backup just in case). I'm on the FireFox beta now and that is working really well. ( Did also find that the Microsoft Anti-Malware tool is a Major resource drain and in general my computer was 500% faster once that was uninstalled ). The FileZilla issue didn't go away.

I did notice something that might be useful here; When FileZilla was taking a long time to load, I looked at:> Resource Monitor :> Disk and the highest use / most active processes was Filezilla. Then it tells you a file / folder that processes is accessing and it was showing C:\users\Jamie Dolan\gmailbackup FileZilla sat there for quite a while on that folder.

That is one path lower than where I am normally saving files to and transferring files from, as I would normally be in C:\users\Jamie Dolan\Documents\files_for_current_www_project, So I am not quite understanding why Filezilla would access that directory at all. Now, Just as the name implies, Yes, that is my uncompressed Gmail backup (fetched with a different program, not Filezilla). It currently contains 433,255 files at a size of 9.53 GB.

If Filezilla did have a need to scan through that in any fashion, it would no doubt slow it to a crawl.

Any ideas why Filezilla might have been accessing that directory?

I checked through the preferences to see if I could see anything for Filezilla that was pointing to that directory. There was nothing, Logging is off and so is Debug. Though, I could turn either of these on if you think it would potentially help capture any useful data.

Thanks very much;

Jamie Dolan

[jamiedolan]

HI;

I just went into Filezilla, It's been running for a couple days. On the left side in My Documents folder, I right clicked and did Create Folder, Then Typed the name of the Folder and clicked the okay / create button. Filezilla immediately went to Not-Responding.

I pulled up the resource monitor and saw that Filezilla was access NTFS Master File Table. It took it about 90 seconds, this this entry went away from the disk monitor and filezillia came back to life again.

Resource Manager When Filezilla went Not Responding.

Fullscreen capture 2112011 112444 AM.jpg (95.53 KiB) Viewed 11876 times

(I do see Google trying to sneak in there any do a little indexing.)

So maybe this all has something to do with how Filezilla accesses my file system? Should a huge file system on the disks it writes to / reads from be a issue?

Thanks

Jamie

[botg]

FileZilla merely tries to see if that directory has a subdirectory so that it can display the + in the directory tree. I bet that if you were to step into it with a debugger, you'd find that that some external component is severely slowing down the lookup. My guess would be some sort of virus scanner.

[jamiedolan]

FileZilla merely tries to see if that directory has a subdirectory so that it can display the + in the directory tree. I bet that if you were to step into it with a debugger, you'd find that that some external component is severely slowing down the lookup. My guess would be some sort of virus scanner.

I removed the virus scanners from my system last week. Do you know of a open source windows debugger that would work?

Thanks

[botg]

Gdb might work, but you would have to recompile the source to disable optmization and to generate debug information. Not that easy I'm afraid

[jamiedolan]

It looks like I got it fixed.

After trying many things; I disabled Windows System Protection. It was set with the default settings and turned on my in internal 1TB drive. Once I turned it off it immediately solved the problem with FileZillia.

I can instantly create folders in FileZilla, rename then, etc with no delay.

Though not everyone may want to disable the Windows System Protection, I just wanted to report that this solved the problem, in case anyone is suffering with this issue.

Thanks!

Jamie

[botg]

Peculiar.

[boco]

Never heard of it. Maybe a problem related to the Volume Shadow Copy Service.

[Hugh_K]

I am running a generic windows 7 x64 system that I've had running for a couple months, and the 3.4.0 x64 version of Filezilla, newest release.

Filezilla takes a couple minutes to load on my laptop every time.

I do not have this issue with any other programs, period.

I do have some mapped network drives. But why would filezilla care about that?

Reading through the forums it appears this is a known and unresolved issue.

Great program but this is a serious flaw.

Are there any solutions for this?

[boco]

I am running a generic windows 7 x64 system that I've had running for a couple months, and the 3.4.0 x64 version of Filezilla, newest release.

Would like to have that, too. Unfortunately, an x64 Windows build doesn't exist.

Filezilla takes a couple minutes to load on my laptop every time.

I do not have this issue with any other programs, period.

You are lucky. I had that problem with several programs. Since then, I don't use Windows network anymore.

I do have some mapped network drives. But why would filezilla care about that?

All drive letters are queried for some information. And mapped drives appear as normal ones.

Reading through the forums it appears this is a known and unresolved issue.

Great program but this is a serious flaw.

I absolutely agree, this is a serious flaw in Windows Networking. Querying Windows network drives can take ages, the delay is introduced by Windows itself.