Windchill slow with Windows XP

[JamesBurcham]

My company just started using Windchill with Creo 2.0, we have some uses using Windows 7 and some still using Windows XP. For my Windows XP users Windchill seems to be very slow. It is much slower than for my Windows 7 users. Is there anything I can do to increase the performance for the XP users? Upgrading to Windows 7 is not an option at this point, because of an old program they are using that 7 does not support. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

[tswett]

What version of Windchill are you using to vault the Creo data?

You may have to look into the version of the browser running on these WinXP systems. Here is their Windchill Web Browser comparison brief PDF: http://www.ptc.com/WCMS/files/125513/en/WindchillWebBrowserComparisonTechBrief.pdf

Check out this document about their Windchill 10x Client Requirements.

http://www.ptc.com/WCMS/files/125512/en/Windchill10xClientRequirements.pdf

Also, if you haven't used the Windchill Client Inspector on the systems, I would recommend that also:
http://www.ptc.com/WCMS/files/119034/en/WCClientInspectorDeployAdminGuide.pdf

The WCI will allow you to see if there are any TPI/TAN/Docs that need to be applied to these systems.

[JamesBurcham]

Thanks for your response Tim. This information was helpful, but I was still not able to improve the performance of Windchill on the XP machines. We are running PDM Essentials, which does not support the Client Inspector.

[tswett]

Do you have PTC System Monitor(PSM) installed? I would recommend looking into that and opening a TS call. They may be able to help you out, but it will allow them to see the performance issue a little better with info from PSM.

[JamesBurcham]

I'm not sure what PTC System Monitor is, how would I look to see if I have that? I'm guessing I don't. PDM Essentials is a very basic version of Windchill. As it was explained to me, it is Windchill with the advance funtionality turned off. So I get the basics of Windchill but nothing else.

[tswett]

Ok. Not sure what your licensing with PTC contains, but this is a separate download form PTC:

https://www.ptc.com/view?im_dbkey=151405

Check this out and also recommend opening a TS call to see if there's an ability for them to work with you.

--Tim

[hlinseisen]

I think to give you some help you have to go a little bit mor into detail what action is slow.

First of all i'd recommend that you install the processexplorer of sysinternals on your client to check ram and cpu performance.
Maybe you also try different browsers like Chrome or Firefox.

For your legacy problem with the software that doesn't run thith windows 7 --- did you ever try the XP compatibility mode in windows 7 ? With that one i was even able to install productview 8.0 on windows 7.

[LoriSood]

James,

What are the specs of your Windows XP machines? Do they meet the minimum requriements outlined in the guide that Tim mentioned (i.e. http://www.ptc.com/WCMS/files/125512/en/Windchill10xClientRequirements.pdf).

Are your users on Windows XP running on a WAN or a LAN?

What exactly is slow (i.e. general modeling within Creo or workspace actions, such as check out and check in)?

Are the workspace caches local to the machines?

Is the Creo install local to the machine?

Are you using the same config.pro files across all clients?

If you delete/rename and recreate the local workspace cache is there any improvement?

[JamesBurcham · Accepted solution]

Thank you all for the help. After some investigation, and the help of PTC Support, it seams its the computer and operating system where causing the issue not Windchill. I updated the users computer, which has solved the issue.

Again thank you all for the help I appreciate it.