File - Open takes about a minute

[StephenW]

Sometime recently, maybe a week or 2 ago, Creo 4 (M130) started taking a long time for the file open dialog box to come up. I've timed it, turns out its about a minute, plus/minus a few seconds.

I had been ignoring the problem thinking it was a large workspace issue until I got fed up with it this morning and started troubleshooting the issue.

So far I have:

• deleted my PDMLink workspaces and deleted the .wf file...didn't improve performance
• Made a workspace with only one item ...didn't improve performance
• Went offline from pdmlink...didn't improve performance
• cleaned out my working directory ...didn't improve performance
• check hard drive space (250 gb available on a 500gb drive ...didn't improve performance
• removed all my config.pro/config.sup files from loading...didn't improve performance
• compared my server ping speed to another user without issue with seemingly identical results (+/- a millisecond)
• checked my std.out file and cleaned up all the errors in there (config.pro errors), the only thing continuing to pop up in there is a Connection restored with License Server(s), have 4 of those now, don't know what those mean

I'm running out of stuff I know how to check, looking for suggestions. I've discussed this with our local support guy and he hasn't heard of anyone else complaining about the issue so currently I am guessing it local to me.

[Chris3]

Did you double check file-> Help -> system information all the way at the bottom to make sure no other config or ui files are being loaded in?

Have you tried launching just the parametric.exe by itself? Are you loading a trail file with the exe?

It just happens one time or is it reoccuring? Ie when you come back to file-> Open later in the session is it the same problem or just on startup?

Are there any other menus that take a long time? If so maybe there is some lag reaching out to the license server.

[StephenW]

I double checked what customization files were loading and I then disabled the .ui and the config.win and menu.def along with the configs and still have the same issue. Doesn't seem to be a "customization" issue.

Its been going on at least a week now...every time I click to open a file. 

I *think* that saving is slower too but its hard to judge.

Just tried launching directly with parametric.exe, same result, really slow FILE-OPEN.

Had our local CAD help guy come and test his laptop on my network connection and he didn't have any problems at all.

I now have our corporate guys working on it. He's currently looking in to video card drivers to see if maybe there is an issue there.

[MartinHanak]

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@StephenW wrote:

I double checked what customization files were loading and I then disabled the .ui and the config.win and menu.def along with the configs and still have the same issue. Doesn't seem to be a "customization" issue.

Its been going on at least a week now...every time I click to open a file. 

I *think* that saving is slower too but its hard to judge.

Just tried launching directly with parametric.exe, same result, really slow FILE-OPEN.

Had our local CAD help guy come and test his laptop on my network connection and he didn't have any problems at all.

I now have our corporate guys working on it. He's currently looking in to video card drivers to see if maybe there is an issue there.

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Hi,

what happens when you login as different user on your computer ?

[StephenW]

That's a good question. I'm at home this week so it's more difficult to test. I'm gonna ask my local CAD guy if he can remotely log in and I will see if they problem persists.

[Chris3]

If you are working from home maybe you have search paths defined that are taking a long time to query over a VPN?

If you have opened Creo without any configs this shouldn't be the case.

[StephenW]

I have removed the configs and the problem persists.

The problem is present both at home and in the office with almost identical lag in the open dialog, maybe a second or 2 longer at home, but negligible in terms of the one minute wait.

Corporate IT is supposed to run some security analysis on my machine to see if there is something wrong there, not sure where we are going after that but I suspect re-imaging my computer going to happen soon.

[BenLoosli]

How long have you been running Creo4 M130?

Is Creo installed locally or on a network drive?

Is the Creo load shared with other users?

Any IT changes to the OS or drivers in the past few weeks?

[StephenW]

I've been on M130 for at least a 3 or 4 months.

Local installation and not load shared.

Corporate does monthly updates, the problem might have been coincident with this previous update, which was maybe 3 weeks ago, something to think about.

I think they are going to run some sort of IT diagnostics today. The guy helping me previously only deals with CAD problems and since he couldn't solve it on his end, he is pushing it up to corporate IT to see if there are other issues.  IT always wants to re-image the computer which is alway a mess to set it back up again.

[TomU]

What happens if you borrow a license and then completely disconnect the computer from the network?

@MartinHanak's question about trying another user account is a good one.

Is there any spike in CPU activity while the wait is occurring?  I wonder if maybe running process explorer would reveal anything...

[StephenW]

New development, I tested Graphics Win32_gdi option and surprisingly, file open was instantaneous.

After this problem started, I had updated my graphics driver to see if that helped, it did not. But disabling it completely does. 

This doesn't bode well for my large assemblies, hmmmmm.

Any thoughts? Should I try older drivers and see if one of them works or should i ask for a new graphics card??

[Chris3]

Not sure what Creo version or PC hardware you have, but you could start with the certified driver version that PTC tests against. Below is an example for Creo 4 / Dell:

http://support.ptc.com/WCMS/files/171727/en/dell_creo4.pdf 

Note that if you upgrade to Creo 7 in order to use the Simulation Live and Topology optimization functionality you will need to use a newer driver as the "official" drivers that PTC supports do not have a high enough CUDA level to support those modules.

[StephenW]

That driver is 5 years old. My computer is only 2 years old and scheduled for replacement at the end of this year (pending business circumstances).

I have asked my support guy to look in to the driver issue.

I am now assuming that it was the last windows update that got me, which was ~3 weeks ago. Since one of those weeks was Texas Snowpocalypse and one of them was 3 days of vacation, it stands to reason that I didn't really pay attention to the problem until last week.

[StephenW · Accepted solution]

Final update. A week of support and our systems guys figured out it was a new security software name Sentinel One that was causing the issue. It was odd because it wasn't affecting everyone one but had become more widespread within the organization. I suspect that it was a combination of the security software and hardware specifics that made it more noticeable on some machines. Also, many users are working from home and some already have performance issues from that.

So temporarily they have moved back to the previous security software until they can get the incompatibility issue fixed with Creo.

I was able to work using the graphics set to win32_gdi on the smaller parts of my project but I was running out of little stuff to fill the time. It was maddeningly frustrating to work with the really slow open dialog, it wasn't just file open, it was any open dialog such as symbols too. Along with other things that were obviously not working right but was much harder to quantify like the file open dialog was.