Loading Help slow...
On my Dell Dimension 8200 (1.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Windows XP/Pro) loading help in Visual Studio 2005 is very slow. It takes up to two minutes (!) before the help screen opens in its own window after choosing Help from the menue or pressing Ctrl-F1, H (or some other letter).
Once opened, performance is o.k. until I restart Visual Studio (having closed all instances).
During load I can't do anything in Visual Studio 2005 whithout getting a "Delay Notification". A strange thing is, if I look at the task manager during the load process it doesn't show much CPU usage most of the time (it goes up to 100% for a few seconds short after beginning and a second time up to about 80% for a few seconds short before finished; for the rest of the time almost no CPU time is used).
Is this normal behavior (I didn't see this with Visual Studio 2003) or do I have a problem (we experience the same behaviour on three different but similarily configured machines)?
Is there anything I can do to make this process faster (e.g. indexing the help files [how], preload help in the background with lower priority [how]) or do I have some kind of wrong settings? I use "Try local first, then online" settings. Changing this to "Try local only, not online" did not make it faster.
Peter
[1290 byte] By [
pgloor] at [2007-12-25]
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the details and sorry for the frustration this has caused. This isn't a known issue to us and unfortunately I don't have a quick workaround for you.
Interesting that CPU usage is not at 100% during the wait period. One thing I'm curious about - do you see the same sluggishness when you launch Dexplore (Document Explorer) from other entry points? For example, if you launch it directly via the Start Menu from one of these:
1) Start -> Programs -> Microsoft Developer Network -> MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2005
2) Start -> Programs -> Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 -> Documentation for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
... do you see the same 2-minute wait?
Also, is your machine running any interesting programs/services that might be utilizing system resources even though Task Manager reports CPU usage is low?
Thanks!
Jeremy Jones
Can you tell us what the total memory consumption is on the machine (in TaskMrg) just before you launching Help and how it changes while Help loads.
Also try the following.
(i) Close Search Windows and Favorites Window in Document Explorer.
(ii) Restart VS and go to Help->Index and see if it loads faster.
Also, can you try setting Help to Internal Help Viewer (in Tools->Optoins->Help->General) and see if Help loads up faster in VS.
--
Regards,
Saurabh
o.k. I see, there is obviousely a problem.
Starting from Visual Studio 2005, MSDN Library for Visual Stusdio 2005 or Documentation for Visual Studio 2005 is all about the same. High activity (85-100%) during the first 15 seconds. No activity (93-95% idle, 3% SYSTEM, 2% taskmanager and sometimes 2% explorer) with a few glitches caused by SQL Server and Norman Antivirus for the next 85 - 90 seconds. Then 40 - 80% (?) usage when Document Manager gets displayed on the screen.
Absolutetely no problem with Document Manager 7.0. This starts within 10 - 15 seconds.
I'm not aware of any process/service that could cause the problem. I will try to find the problem by stopping any service/tasks not necessarilly needed.
Peter
I've been plagued by slow Document Explorer as well. (Faulty too, it sends a crash report to oca almost once a day).
I just installed VS 2005 on another computer an launched the help (from the start menu) to search for something and I was amazed it came up within a second! It got me concerned there was a problem with my other computer. so I decided to investigate a little. Here's what I've noticed in Task Manager:
Image Name Page Faults I/O Reads Bytes Mem Usage
dexplorer.exe 25,792 73,885,257 34,028 K
Almost 26 thousand page faults! I don't have the timings for page faults off hand; but they're REALLY slow. No wonder dexplorer is so slow, especially if that virtual memory isn't in the cache and has to be read from disk.
Does it really need to read in over 70 megabytes of data just to display the documentation intro page? Over 33 megabytes of memory makes dexplorer.exe the biggest hog on my system (with applications like WinWord, IE, Excel, SQL Server, Outlook all running--with ie the only one that comes close with min 14 MB to 28 MB and the next biggest WinWord with almost 10 MB).
As for the quickness of my other computer: I'm chalking that up to the cache; I've since rebooted and cannot reproduce the quickness upon first invocation.
The first computer: Pentium 4 HT 1.83 Ghz per processor, 480MB or RAM. The second: Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz, 504Mb of RAM. The first had a defrag just before the above test.
Has there been any progress on the topic?
I am experiencing exactly the same problems - dexplore and visual studio start very slow and consume a lot of memory and CPU resources. I am running the latter on a 2GB RAM dual-core system. The problems started after I installed Intel VTune or DevPartner Studio, though I am uncertail about that.
Unfortentely, despite all my efforts, I have not been able to identify the cause. Furthermore, if I debug a .NET program, I have to wait for about 15-20 seconds each time it terminates, which is quite annoying
Any help will be welcome
Thank you,
Stefan
 Stefan Popov wrote: |
| Has there been any progress on the topic? I am experiencing exactly the same problems - dexplore and visual studio start very slow and consume a lot of memory and CPU resources. I am running the latter on a 2GB RAM dual-core system. The problems started after I installed Intel VTune or DevPartner Studio, though I am uncertail about that. Unfortentely, despite all my efforts, I have not been able to identify the cause. Furthermore, if I debug a .NET program, I have to wait for about 15-20 seconds each time it terminates, which is quite annoying |
|
No, there as been no "progress" on this topic, AFIAC. I hope Visual Studio 2005 SP1 will include fixes to dexplore; but, there's been no announcements on what fixes SP1 will contain. I hope now that VS2003 SP1 is released more effort will be put into VS2005 SP1 with respect to publication of it's content.Some things I can suggest that I find have helped with dexplore's performance: defrag your disk, and switch the "Filtered by" to "(unfiltered)".
When I exit dexplore it crashes and sends a crash report to Microsoft, taking much longer than 15-20 seconds to actually terminate. I'm jealous yours only takes 15-20 seconds :-).
When I load dexplore it incurs about 14 thousand page faults and reads about 4 megabytes of data. With some estimates at a page fault taking 1 million to tens-of-millions cycles, on a 1Ghz computer that's at least 14 seconds by by calculations--in page faults alone. Considering dexplore is only 175k, reading 4 Mbs seems like a needless waste as well.
If you've installed anything that adds to dexplore's help collections, that only makes it slower.
Sorry, I have no news. The situation is still the same. I have no idea why this happens on any of our Dell Dimension PCs but not on any of our Dell Inspiron Notebooks.
15-20 seconds each time it terminates? I would be happy with that.
Peter
I don't have vtune, or the environtment variables, and dexplorer is still an absolute DOG..
It's close to unusable on my development box, possibly some interaction w/ 3rd party help tools? F1 help takes minutes to come up, with no messages or otherwise.
I would love to see dexplorer get replaced w/ good old CHMs at this point, it's been nothing but a slow, buggy nightmare.
Are there any patches in the works for it in sp1? will sp1 be out before .net 3.0?
| jcraigue wrote: |
| Are there any patches in the works for it in sp1? will sp1 be out before .net 3.0? |
|
There are some patches for dexplorer in SP1. As with Visual Studio, nothing substantial; just minor bug fixes...
.NET 3.0 has been released, BTW.
Yep yep!
Just downloaded it, now to see what all other parts n pieces I need - thanks for the response.
I will be re-installing vs on another pc as part of the migration to .net 3.0, I'll see if I can reliably predict/determine where the help is getting whacked - will post if I find anything.
Cheers...
jac
Hi, how are you ?
I have a Windows Vista machine running VS 2005 and MSDN documentation installed.
Looking in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft Help i found many kinds of "support" files of MSDN help system.
My installation of MSDN documentation was made in another disk unit.
Example:
C: - Windows Vista
D: - Program Installations( include MSDN Documentation )
E: Woking files.
Ok.
Is possible to change the location of this "support" help files installed in C: drive. Consider that duration MSDN Documentation installation the location was choosed was D:\MSDN( for example), but this support files are installed in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft Help .
Exist some registry key or configuration file that is possible to change and help system recongize this change and move files to this new location ?
I want to mantain in OS drive only the files that are necessary to be there.
Thanks in advance.
Roger Villela
http://www.codeplex.com/bcljournal
