Delay in opening Programs, and apps.

-ADREN-

Ive Had this problem for ages now and its really getting to me. When I go to open something as simple as a word document, or even notepad, there is this huge delay before it opens. Its not like its processing or anything, it just waits then opens it. I found that when I'm not connected to the network here in college accomadation, or when I unplug my broadband at home that the problem goes away.

Anyone have any idea what this is about, its really irritating. It takes ages just to open an mp3 or anything, even if I right click on files it takes a while.

???

Thanks.
-Coz.

kinkstr

i had a problem like that a while back when trying to open image files, my anti- virus was doing a scan before it let me open it.

aidan_walsh

How long is "a long time"? Do you have an anti-virus installed? Spyware detector? How old is your machine?

Vikings

How much ram do you have and what os are you on?

-ADREN-

I have norton Anti Virus, but the problem was there before that anyways.

I have Ad aware, and Spy Destroyer also.

My Machine is about 10 Months old. Running Windows Xp with 512mb ram, xp2500 @ 2.0Ghz

A long time would be about 10 to 15 seconds, a very noticable delay in comparision to a normal functioning pc.

Khannie

Check your path for entries that don't exist. If it's trying to connect to a non-existant computer before running your program, that'll slow things down.

Also, try disabling your antivirus for a few seconds, try starting an app, see if that works. If it does, consider reducing the number of file types / drives you operate your antivirus on.

I'm sure there are other things.....but trying to access a nonexistant drive / computer is one that I've seen cause trouble before.

yawn

my first thoughts would be the anti-virus scanning the files for infection before opening

stevenmu

My first guess would be that word, and other programs, could have files from networked locations in the recently used files lists ?

Other than that does it only happen when you double-click a document or does it also happen if you just open word on its own ?

-ADREN-

Khannie, what do you mean by check my paths?

Steve, when I go to the actual winword.exe the delay doesnt occur, only say when I open a document. Same with winamp.exe if I open that first its fine, but if i click on an .mp3 the delay occurs, then it goes on opening the program.

Stephen

Weird. I'm getting the same problem, but only with winRAR - everything else opens normally.

Khannie

-ADREN- wrote:

Khannie, what do you mean by check my paths?

This is for win2k...but it's pretty similar on XP if I remember....

my computer->right click->properties->advanced->environment variables

In there, under "system variables" there's probably a variable called "path". This is where your computer looks for stuff when it's trying to find programs. E.g. if you do this: start->run->notepad <enter> it will open notepad for you, and it knows how to find it because it's in your path.

If your path contains stuff pointing at network drives, or drives that don't exist all the time, then it will try to check those drives (and spend ages failing) before checking the rest of your path. So have a look through the paths, and if anything looks funny, then remove it from the path (back up your path first...in notepad or whatever).

If I've confused you, then here's what to do:
start->run->cmd <enter>
in the little black box that shows up type "env > C:\env.txt" <enter> (without the quotes) then post that file up here (C:\env.txt) and I'll have a look for you.

-ADREN-

Nope, seems to be just all C:\ stuff, C drive being my hard drive thats in the comp.

But now that u mention about other network drives.. loads of people that used to be on the network have gone, but yet in windows explorer there sharde docs and directories still show. ?

Standard Toaster

I had this issue on my old pc and it turned out to be a video driver of all things.
Try start/run/"msconfig" and the boot.ini tab. tick [size=-1]/BASEVIDEO and reboot. See if that make any difference.[/size]

Khannie

-ADREN- wrote:

Nope, seems to be just all C:\ stuff, C drive being my hard drive thats in the comp.

But now that u mention about other network drives.. loads of people that used to be on the network have gone, but yet in windows explorer there sharde docs and directories still show. ?

Well...it's not the path at least....

Do those shared folders and stuff show up as mapped drives? If so, right click->disconnect.

stevenmu

-ADREN- wrote:

Steve, when I go to the actual winword.exe the delay doesnt occur, only say when I open a document. Same with winamp.exe if I open that first its fine, but if i click on an .mp3 the delay occurs, then it goes on opening the program.

I had the same, or a very similar problem with windows 2000. There's probably a more correct way to fix it, but I got around it by disabling DDE for the document types affected. To do it in windows 2000 (I think XP is the very same), open my computer, go to Tools->Folder Options and pick the File Types tab. Find and select the extension for the file type you want (e.g. for word it's DOC) and press Advanced. This should give you a list of all the actions for that document type (these are the options that appear when you right-click a document, the one in bold is the default that happens when you double click). Select Open and click Edit to see the command for opening the document. If 'Use DDE' is ticked, untick it. Then put the following in the box for 'Application used to perform action'.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\WINWORD.EXE" /n "%1"

making sure that you include the quotation marks (you may have to change the path to winword.exe if that's not where it's installed). Then click all the way back out to my computer and try double clicking on a word doc, or repeat for any other file types you're having problems with.