Problems with drag, cut, paste, delete

[stevewhyte]

Hi all,

Sellerdeck has started taking a significant amount of time to drag and drop, cut and paste, and delete or undelete products. I can count this in minutes rather than seconds and the quantity of products I am moving does make a difference, but not in direct relation to the quantity I am moving. (ie 2 products does not take twice as long as 1 product)

The issue seems to be machine specific, as I loaded a snapshot on to my personal laptop and it's fine.

Interestingly, if I drag a section containing products, it seems fine.

I'm using Windows 10 Professional 64 bit, 16gb ram, 2tb drive, Intel Xeon 2.8ghz processor. Basically everything is higher spec on the PC than the laptop, and it was fine one day and not the next. I am guessing maybe a Windows update, but it was a good while ago and I can't restore to an earlier version now.

Any ideas anyone please?

Cheers,
Steve

[stevewhyte]

I should add that I get the "Not responding" message at the top and when I run the task manager. There is very little processor use being shown then all of a sudden it goes up to 25%, and a total of 35% memory for all applications during and after drag and dropping.

[KarenBM]

I came for the exact same problems, it has been going on for a while - at least a year - but I just moved 15 products and it tok two hours so I can't have that anymore! Task manager showed not responding with a large chunk of the memory taken up with it. Very interested to see if anyone can help here.

[PA.com]

I personally find when doing a large amount of database editing in Sellerdeck that it benefits from closing and restarting the application, maybe even rebooting the machine. It always seems considerably quicker to me after a restart, don’t know if you find this?

[stevewhyte]

Thanks all, A restart makes a small improvement for a short space of time. Then it's back to slow, slow, slow!

[stevewhyte]

I have noticed that once restarted I can drag products quite freely until I cut and paste something, then it slows dramatically again.

Strangely in Sage, I also have very slow access to the Products database. All of the others (Customers, Purchase orders etc) work fine. This data is held on a server though, so don't know if there's a connection. It is odd that this issue is effecting only Products in both programmes.

[Mike Hughes]

I haven't done much editing for a while, but the two things that absolutely slow down Sellerdeck when making changes are:

1. Having one of the Preview windows active (even if not being viewed). It's best with neither of them open.

2. Not blocking images, etc that are online from preview mode with a blockif. Check things like 3rd party logos, social sharing widgets, analytics code, etc.

I can't explain why different computers behave differently. It might be the way they handle graphics or it might be something else.

[stevewhyte]

Out of interest, are either of you using a layout incorporating Parent products. I have a template from Bee Web Design that allows the parent product to show child products (options) in a list with images along side the main image and description. It's a really nice way of displaying options but I have a feeling my problems may have started around a similar time as I installed this design.

I am thinking that this could be an indexing issue, but I don't know enough about Access to be able to tell.

[stevewhyte]

Thanks Mike, our posts crossed.

I generally have preview off and I haven't found that having a web page preview open in a browser makes any difference. I'm also not versed enough to know about blockif's, but I'm going to ask the designer we use in light of my observation above.

Cheers,
Steve

[DavidCP]

I do have this problem and sometimes it can just hang and lose the products that you are drag and dropping. We have multi user, so can only do drag and drop if only one user is on. In essence our slowing is down to the size of the Access database file. Anything over 850mb in size and we get performance issues, it doesn't matter how good the machines are. Compact helps a bit but I find that customer emails can really build up the size of the database and that they need purging. We can then get an issue where it resends some of the emails selected for purge which is really annoying!

[stevewhyte]

Thanks David,

My database is only 300mb with just one user so it's good to hear that it can work on a much bigger scale and therefore that probably isn't my issue. I'm going to try uninstalling Sellerdeck and starting again when I get a chance, and I'll keep the forum posted.

[stevewhyte]

Hi all,

Further to all of this, is there anyone out there that would be able to look at the wait chain attached to see if that gives any clues as to what is going on? I don't know anything about these or what they mean.

[brucet]

Steve, have you tried ticking the 'Compact Database' option on closing down the Sellerdeck software? That can often resolve database-related issues.

For anyone who's problem is an inflated Access database, the only real solution is to upgrade to SQL Server, which is a much higher performance architecture.

Where there are old and inactive orders, you could copy the ActinicCatalog.mdb file to a secure archive and then delete as many as possible. That can buy some time, but a SQL Server upgrade is the best long-term solution. Your business depends on it - why keep struggling on if you've outgrown the Access architecture?

Sellerdeck Desktop works well with SQL Server Express, which is a decent free version from Microsoft, so the cost need not be prohibitive. Once you have that installed, upgrading your Sellerdeck site is straightforward. You just have to enter the SQL Database details into the Sellerdeck software and it will handle the transition for you.

For peace of mind we can handle the upgrade on your behalf, although of course there is a cost involved.

[stevewhyte]

Thanks Bruce,

I do compact the database every time I close Sellerdeck, which is very frequently at the moment. In the course of my investigations, I have seen some say that you should not over compact the database as it can lead to corruption. Depends who you talk to though.

I also looked at SQL Server Express. I'm not an IT guy (I only produce my own web site), but I have already downloaded and installed it, and will give it a go. Watch this space!

Cheers,
Steve

[stevewhyte]

RESOLVED (for now)
Just to update anyone effected, took a snapshot, uninstalled Sellerdeck, renamed the "Sellerdeck 2016" folder in my documents, reinstalled Sellerdeck and imported the snapshot. So far, all is working very well and interestingly the Access 2013 prerequisite was found to be missing upon installation. I doubt this would heve been removed when uninstalling, so I wonder if a later version (we have Access 2020 or something) has maybe overwritten it? I'm not an expert, but seemed odd.