I’ll say first that I like some of the new start-up features of 8.5 beta 1. The progress bar is nice, it gives the user some comfort that that should save on some helpdesk calls. However…It consistently takes between 3-8 minutes to start up first thing in the morning. I’ve disabled pretty much every other program on my machine, waited 30 minutes after boot up to start the client, prayed; yet nothing has worked.
Subject: Those results are not consistent with our internal testing. There are a number of things that you could do to narrow down where the slow down may be occuring.
The 8.5 Beta 1 contains a number of significant improvements to startup, However, not all of the improvements were available in the 8.5 codebase at the time of Beta 1. Since then, additional improvements have been made which will be made available in 8.5 Beta 2.
That said, your timings are orders of magnitude off with respect to what we are measuring internally on a lower end laptop.
What is your specific machine configuration and OS?
- Getting specific breakdown of the timings: (Cold and Warm)
As you perform the measurements, what are the individual times for…
Time from 1st double-click to Password
Time in password dialog
Time from password OK to Home Page
Knowing which of these areas is slower may help identify your bottlenecks.
- Analyzing fragmentation at the dir and/or file level
Internally, we have found that fragmentation at the Windows OS level can have a significant effect on startup - on the neighborhood of 25%.
To measure the amount of fragmentation of a given file or directory, there is a Windows tool called CONTIG. The utility is described and can be downloaded from here: Contig - Sysinternals | Microsoft Learn
To get a quick rundown of the fragmentation of Notes, you could run it as follows:
Open a command prompt
If you copy CONTIG.EXE to a directory called C:\Tools, and install Notes into C:\Notes, run it as follows:
C:\Tools\Contig C:\Notes /a /s > find "fragments > fragments.txt
Where /a means to analyze. Omitting it will defrag fragmented files
/s means all subdirectories
You can also specify files that match a certain type *.dll
ACTIONS REQUESTED:
After determining the fragmentation, omit the /a to have the directories defragmented.
Please remeasure cold start with the files defragged.
NOTE: The tool uses the same APIs to safely move around parts of the file that the system defragger does.
- Files to exclude from AntiVirus scanning
In general, only scan files on write, instead of read/write.
Exclude *.JAR files in C:\Notes\Framework and below
Exclude %TMP%\XPDPLAT (Assuming that Symantec allows you to use environment variables.
- Gathering data with ProcMon (it can be downloaded from here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx?PHPSESSID=d926 )
Prior to starting Notes, both cold and warm starts, start ProcMon and add the following to ProcMon filter:
Operation contains Read
Operation contains Write
Operation contains Create (most file opens, even existing opens, are creates as reported by ProcMon)
Press OK and ProcMon will start collecting data.
Start Notes, supply password and get Notes to a started state.
As soon as Notes is finished starting, where you would “stop the clock”, stop ProcMon from collecting data. You can either Press Ctrl-E, or use the 3rd toolbar icon that looks like a magnifying glass.
Save the data and attach that file to your post (you may want to Zip it before attaching). File\Save… and take the defaults, native format, PML.
NOTE: ProcMon will throw off the timings somewhat, so data should be gathered in a different run from the actual measurements.
- Getting some general Notes data via NSD
With Notes running, perform the following to get an NSD file which will tell me some general information about the machine.
Open a command prompt.
Change Dir to the C:\Notes\Data directory
Run NSD: …\NSD (Dot Dot, no args)
At the end, it will indicate a file was saved in C:\Notes\Data\IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT\NSD*.txt
Attach that file to your post.
Doug Conmy
Lotus Notes Lead Architect
IBM Senior Technical Staff Member
Subject: *Did you also exclude your program directory in your virus-scanner