SOLVED Starting PA is slow

[ChrisGee]

Hello,

PA (latest version) on Win 7 x64, quad core, 3GHz, SDD, takes 4 seconds to start.
Why is this so slow.
With 7zip the same archivce is opened in some milliseconds!!

Quitting the Antivirus Program (Kaspersky) does not change that.

Please advise.

[ckit]

@spwolf Most of the time 1sec maybe a little less.

My PA 2017 install is on a Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVMe
My testing was on a Samsung 850 EVO drive though

[spwolf]

@ChrisGee:

Hello,

PA (latest version) on Win 7 x64, quad core, 3GHz, SDD, takes 4 seconds to start.
Why is this so slow.
With 7zip the same archivce is opened in some milliseconds!!

Quitting the Antivirus Program (Kaspersky) does not change that.

Please advise.

is everything fast when you use shell extensions to preview or extract the file?

thanks!

[ChrisGee]

yes, e.g. extracting or packing via the explorer context menu is faster.

[Brian Gregory]

@ChrisGee:

Hello,

PA (latest version) on Win 7 x64, quad core, 3GHz, SDD, takes 4 seconds to start.
Why is this so slow.
With 7zip the same archivce is opened in some milliseconds!!

Quitting the Antivirus Program (Kaspersky) does not change that.

Please advise.

Are you using Microsoft EMET?
I found all sorts of things could go really slowly with EMET installed.

[ChrisGee]

@Brian:

Are you usign Microsoft EMET?
I found all sorts of things could go really slowly with EMET installed.

No, EMET is not installed.

[jkb]

Hi,

I also found it to be slow to startup - I’m on the latest version as of today. Disabling “Silenty check for update at startup” seems to have made it a little bit faster for me.

Configuration > Autoupdate

[ChrisGee]

PA starting is still slow.

Here a log from the process monitor:
16:19:17,6877295 7932 POWERARC.EXE RegOpenKey HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\PowerArchiverInt\General SUCCESS Desired Access: Read
16:19:17,6877469 7932 POWERARC.EXE RegSetInfoKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\PowerArchiverInt\General SUCCESS KeySetInformationClass: KeySetHandleTagsInformation, Length: 0
16:19:17,6877623 7932 POWERARC.EXE RegQueryValue HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\PowerArchiverInt\General\Language NAME NOT FOUND Length: 144
16:19:17,6877831 7932 POWERARC.EXE RegCloseKey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\PowerArchiverInt\General SUCCESS
16:19:17,6881508 7932 POWERARC.EXE CreateFile C:\Program Files (x86)\PowerArchiver\UPDATE.INI NAME NOT FOUND Desired Access: Read Attributes, Disposition: Open, Options: Open Reparse Point, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: Read, Write, Delete, AllocationSize: n/a
16:19:18,1703775 7932 POWERARC.EXE RegQueryKey HKCU SUCCESS Query: HandleTags, HandleTags: 0x0
16:19:18,1704031 7932 POWERARC.EXE RegQueryKey HKCU SUCCESS Query: Name
16:19:18,1704290 7932 POWERARC.EXE RegOpenKey HKCU\Software\PowerArchiverInt\General SUCCESS Desired Access: Query Value, Enumerate Sub Keys, Read Control

It seems after trying to create the file update.ini, PA takes 0.5 seconds.
But it seems it cannot create the file, as the folder is usually writeprotected.
Inifiles should always be in the proifile folder.

But same delay when update.ini exists.
What should be in the update.ini?

And later in the log there isd another 0.5 seconds gap where the processmonitor reports no action.

[spwolf]

Hello ChrisGee,

Choice of skins will speed up loading of main application. Try using classic interface for instance, instead of modern.

It has nothing to do with reading from the registry, delays you see there are due to code loading internally in the executable which is not shown in any kind of 3rd party tool such as process explorer, or related when it reads something from registry.

For upcoming PA 2017, we are looking at speeding up load of main application as well. Of course, using shell and preview window is absolutely the fastest way to use PowerArchiver.

We will have some alpha testing of new versions soon enough, hopefully we can reduce the time to load main application extensively without losing any of features (compression ones, but maybe we will have to lose some interface options).

Thanks!

[drteeth]

I too have never found PA to be particularly swift when loading, even when it is cached (successive loads).

[delixyr]

The latest version of PA 2017 works slow for me for a rather powerful system with 12 GB of RAM and i7.
Explorer context menu extracting, launching main UI and Toolbox… All are slow.

Even saving settings and closing main window is slow… Takes like 4 seconds to do all that.

[spwolf]

@delixyr said in Starting PA is slow:

The latest version of PA 2017 works slow for me for a rather powerful system with 12 GB of RAM and i7.
Explorer context menu extracting, launching main UI and Toolbox… All are slow.

Even saving settings and closing main window is slow… Takes like 4 seconds to do all that.

we have sped up explorer compress to file, extract to / to “instant” from “4s” in next build.

As to closing, someone else reported this but we can not reproduce this. Does this happen each time for you? And what AV do you use? OS? Thanks a lot!

[Blanzer]

@delixyr said in Starting PA is slow:

The latest version of PA 2017 works slow for me for a rather powerful system with 12 GB of RAM and i7.
Explorer context menu extracting, launching main UI and Toolbox… All are slow.

Even saving settings and closing main window is slow… Takes like 4 seconds to do all that.

having the same issue, is there a way to fix it?

[spwolf]

you can check latest .83 build, now shell extensions compress/extract start instantly, this is something we could “easily” optimize in 2017.

[nikkho]

@spwolf said in Starting PA is slow:

you can check latest .83 build, now shell extensions compress/extract start instantly, this is something we could “easily” optimize in 2017.

Build 83 feels a bit faster. “Extract here” context menu takes about 2 seconds to start showing the extract dialog. Not fast yet nevertheless.

[spwolf]

@nikkho said in Starting PA is slow:

@spwolf said in Starting PA is slow:

you can check latest .83 build, now shell extensions compress/extract start instantly, this is something we could “easily” optimize in 2017.

Build 83 feels a bit faster. “Extract here” context menu takes about 2 seconds to start showing the extract dialog. Not fast yet nevertheless.

interesting, now this loads before rest of the pa.exe code. On all of my computers it is pretty instant, vs 4s-5s before. For instance compress+options is still slower like before, check how long it takes?

Timing it with stopwatch, it is around 0.9s-1.0s to show here.

[delixyr]

@spwolf @Blanzer I have added a screen recording here : https://forums.powerarchiver.com/topic/5793/real-slow-ux-pa-2017

[nikkho]

@spwolf I almost use Compress with options, due to checking “Experimental codecs”. I timed “Extract here” and it is about 1.5-2.0 seconds. As I said, faster than before, but still slow. To me, things longer than 1s, are not instant. Maybe a matter of perception.

Anyway, it is a nice improvement.

[spwolf]

@nikkho said in Starting PA is slow:

@spwolf I almost use Compress with options, due to checking “Experimental codecs”. I timed “Extract here” and it is about 1.5-2.0 seconds. As I said, faster than before, but still slow. To me, things longer than 1s, are not instant. Maybe a matter of perception.

Anyway, it is a nice improvement.

How slow is compressed with options? It got small improvement, but nothing like other options… Worstvxaee scenarios we have here it improved from 5s to 4s.

on my laptop for me extract here is 0.8s and compress to file is 1s. If I do a lot of commpression tasks and memory gets fragmented it might get slower but that’s about what’s possible.

Do you use any av?

[ckit]

Not sure if this will work as I’ve only just starting playing with it.

Install Process Lasso Free (I’m a Pro user) and set powerarc.exe as “Classify as a High Performance process”

[spwolf]

@ckit said in Starting PA is slow:

Not sure if this will work as I’ve only just starting playing with it.

Install Process Lasso Free (I’m a Pro user) and set powerarc.exe as “Classify as a High Performance process”

how fast is extract here and compress to .pa/zip for you, for first show of PA window?

[ckit]

@spwolf Most of the time 1sec maybe a little less.

My PA 2017 install is on a Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVMe
My testing was on a Samsung 850 EVO drive though