Actinic slows to a halt for the first time in ages.

[george]

I'm on XP, and you'll see from one of my posts earlier that I've done a sysyem restore back to a few days ago beyond all the recent updates, which I assume it removes as its supposed to take the registry back to the way it was on the day the checkpoint was created.

I have to scoot now, but I'll be getting into this again later tonight.

[Bonjour]

I don't know if this is of any use, but when googling for slow performance issues, someone recommended this software to tell what processes are running in the background to help work out any issues.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sys...sExplorer.mspx

I wouldn't understand the info it gave, but wondered if it may help, as we are at a dead end?

[MeFromLondon]

Try rem’ing out the javascript code for the AddThis button.

David

[fergusw]

Try rem’ing out the javascript code for the AddThis button.

David

Another possibility....... Good shout, MeFromLondon!
I notice George that you have this on your site, and I've checked as well with another site which has addThis too....

Worthwhile checking. If the addThis performance for downloading has degraded then you would possible see this as well, with the preview on.
I hope it is something as simple as this........

[Kirk]

Have been very interested in watching this thread. First, my laptop and then my workstation started to bog down running Actinic. Workstation was "Windows Updated" this past weekend and that is when the trouble started with it. Laptop is on auto update.

Unable to stand it anymore, I checked for updates today. According to Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs, the Laptop downloaded and installed today:
.NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 185.00mb
.NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 2 179.00mb
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 28.66mb

I really hope all of the above were simply updates, and not completely new installs. It did take about half an hour for download and install, then once rebooted the computer had yet another round of updates in the taskbar.

It also installed IE8 which was only because I was on the phone when i clicked "ok" (d'oh!). At least I was able to opt for the custom install.

However, the laptop seems to be behaving normally again. Will bang on it the rest of the day to make sure. If it feels right, I'll try my workstation in the morning when I have more than a couple of hours to fool with it. My hope is that an auto update only partially installed, or the most recent updates were a updated to the update.

Windows XP Media Center Version 2002 Service Pack 3
Don't know that this is the answer, but hopefully its at least another piece of the puzzle.

[george]

Mine is XP Pro SP3.

I've already tried removing the add me button, and the livezilla button.


As I said earlier, I still get a much longer delay in Actinics reaction time than normal, even with the preview off.

[Kirk]

G,

Just a thought.
Are you linked to an external database?
If so, have you tried un-linking?

My laptop behaved well all afternoon with lots of copy/pasting sections and products. I'll fiddle with my workstation in the morning.

G'nite.

Kirk

[cbarling]

There suddenly seem to be a lot of much cleverer and virulant trojans and viruses around, including infecting the BIOS. These don't seem to be picked up by current anti-virus programs.

I had something funny on my PC - something called "agent.exe" (which is legitimate but evidently can be replaced by a virus) was taking lots of the resources on my machine. Yet scans for Trojans and viruses was saying my machine was OK.

I used msconfig (Start|Run then type "msconfig") to stop all of the services and programs starting other than the Microsoft ones and also to start my machine in "Selective startup mode" using the "original boot.ini".

That seems to have got rid of my particular problem for now. Don't know if it will help anyone on this thread with problems, but may be worth a try.

Chris

Chris

[cbarling]

I've closed threads http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=42269 and http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=42228 and redirected them to here, as they seem to be talking about the same problem.

Chris

[Bonjour]

I may have sussed it!

George,

I've just seen Kirks post as I've come on here to tell you about my breakthrough and I think he's talking about the same thing (if so where've you been Kirk all this time)

After talking to a supplier yesterday who explained how they lost £1000's cos a windows update blew up their system and it took a week for a professional to sort it, I figured I'd better make sure I had an up to date back up on my laptop just in case things got worse.

I copied everything over, tested it and it worked quickly and okay, but I noticed some images were missing, then I realised they were ones linked to other sites like the Paypal logo and the bookmark thingy, so I went online and they appeared, but guess what, everything in actinic slowed as it had on the desktop.

I went back to the desktop, opened actinic and went offline and it works fine, back online and it's slow - so its something to do with one or all of those links to other sites. Not been a problem before though, so which one is the common denominator Paypal perhaps?

I have:
Paypal
Freeindex
Bookmark
Safebuy (don't think its this as image was there)
BuybyPost
XE currency converter

I did have a similar problem last year when I had one of those free survey polls and because of a problem on their site, my site wouldn't load properly on the web as it was looking for it, but don't recall it affecting actinic on the pc.

I hope this is the start of resolving this bloomin problem!

[cbarling]

Summarising what has been discovered in this and other threads:

- Actinic performance becomes unbearably slow

- This has impacted at least George Mackie, Mark Ward, Darron (Parklifeclothes), Helen(Bonjour), Kirk Pruitt, Dorian Hendrie, and LeeHackett and Teclan report clients with this problem. So at least eight are effected but probably many more, although still a minority

- No one has yet managed to eliminate the problem (but see post above this one which came in while I was composing this post)

- It appears not to be caused by Actinic's code:
* it's happened without any update of software from Actinic
* people are reporting it running both v8 and v9
* there is at least one report of taking a snapshot and importing into the same version of Actinic on a different computer and the problem disappearing

So one suspects an automatic update of some type (but then why isn't everyone impacted?) or some malware.

All further ideas very welcome. I'll be getting someone from support to co-ordinate the response.

Chris

[Duncan Rounding]

A start would be to place a blockif, testing for IsNotPreviewMode, around all external image and code links.

[Bonjour]

Bookmark may be the problem?

I have had a look at George's site and the only 2 external links he has the same as me is the popular generic Bookmark tab thingy and Safebuy.

I have just removed the bookmark from my actinic layout (still there on my hosting at the moment) and everything works peachy! (So far)

So is this the common denominator for all - do you have the social bookmark?
(http://www.addthis.com/)

Getting giddy now!!

[george]

Agree, just went `offline` and site speed seems to be back to normal.

I tried removing the addme button before but the saved preview pages might still have had it. I'll delete it this time instead of hiding it, then regenerate the website and upload.

Fingers crossed eh.

[Duncan Rounding]

Place this block around all external image and code links:

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22IsNotPreviewMode%22%20%2f%3e" >
...EXTERNAL LINKING CODE HERE...
</actinic:block>