I searched the forums and found similar discussions but not anything conclusive. My problem is that no matter which application I run from my portableapps platform, they will periodically hang for 10-20 seconds. The applications don't crash though. After said amount of time they will catch up and the "Not Responding" will go away and all is well. I have been tolerating it thus far just because I love the whole concept of portable apps, but it really does kill efficiency when I have to wait for the program to respond.
I am using a USB 3.0 thumbdrive in a USB 3.0 port with my drivers installed. I can't imagine what would be causing this. I don't think it's an I/o issue because it happens regardless of whether it's reading, writing, or both.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing this and maybe a solution? Thank you all immensely in advance.
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General Application Hanging
February 12, 2014 - 4:00pm
#1
General Application Hanging
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i have no idea what can be doing it
but 1st 2 things i would check is
1 copy it to hdd check if it give same effect
2 download clean PAP and check if clean PAP would give same effect
ZeroX4,
I copied it to the hard drive and will be testing it out over the next few days to get a new baseline for that. Afterwards, I'll try downloading a clean PAP. I'll get back to you in a few days. Thanks for the ideas.
ZeroX4,
I have copied the installation to my desktop and have been using it from there over the past several days. I have not done isolated testing, I've just been using it regularly, and from my experience it seems to not happen (much) when I'm running it off my desktop. This intrigues me because my desktop represents a folder that is a part of my slower HDD, whereas the instance that was hanging is from a faster USB 3.0 thumb drive.
There are some other ideas that have been brought to the table that I still need to test. I will keep everyone updated as I can. Thanks
Do you use sandboxing? This could be a part of a firewall. Or, maybe some other defense system which scans everything and additionally checks against a cloud database?
However, I don't know if that would cause what you described. Just having some wild ideas.
MiK,
I do have Sandboxie installed but I haven't configured it to act on anything yet. My windows firewall has the excepts necessary and I don't have any cloud antivirus installed.
There must be a bottleneck somewhere or maybe some way to debug, you think?
Okay, at least two things are eliminated. In the meantime I've got another idea, that is, I wonder if you run any automatic backing up or synchronization apps for removable drives in general or something particular for that drive? Or, there might be some apps that automatically monitor the removable drives and do something in the background without your knowledge.
some AV will scan a file every time it is opened (regardless of location), and some will do that when a file is opened on a USB drive.
I've found that for me on some computers the AV will slow down the launching of programs from a USB drive.
ps: some Firewalls have 'USB Protection' and might be a factor? Although you said you are using Windows Firewall. That shouldn't be causing you any slow down.
Can you tell us which version of Windows is on the computer and what Anti-virus program is on there?
MiK & Grantwhy,
Good ideas. I'm running Windows 8.1 and for shame, no anti-virus. In my defense though, I'm in the Information Security industry and I practice good browsing habits and I monitor every outbound connection for suspicious links. Despite that, I plan on installing an AV program. I typically use Panda Cloud AV for a no-hassle no-upkeep approach but I may use ZoneAlarm.
I normally have Crashplan running as my backup software but it has not been running for a couple weeks (maintenance on my crashplan server). I don't believe I have anything scanning removable media (Panda Cloud AV has that option, but not installed).
I monitored the process and all files and handles it created or read/write. The Thunderbird program keeps trying to parse the registry trying to find some 'extension' value and it's not there. I don't know if that could contribute to the symptoms but it IS something I observed. I will continue to look for any anomalies.
No antivirus is okay with me, I don't use it either, except on-demand occasionally.
About other software, I've just learned that not only matters what is being used when encountering problems but what is NOT as well.
Coincidentally, since you mention the same app, I've discovered that when running Thunderbird, and, I've experienced some real hangings, with blue screens included.
I recall having similar problems in the past with Firefox, however did not connect the dots at the time. This time it occurred to me that the problem was caused by not running my Comodo firewall, since I was offline and thought it was not needed while doing work on new version of Thunderbird Portable.
At first, I thought the troubles had something to do with running two instances, only later I discovered it was due to a background, invisible, silent blocking. Upon launching I could only see the splash screen, and then nothing. In the Task Manager I could see running thunderbird processes but no apps listed. The problem was not with all instances, which actually added to the confusion, but just with those with no permanent rules set.
Further, I've tested few more apps and found that beside Thunderbird, also susceptible to the same problem are Firefox, and SeaMonkey. Iron, QupZilla, and Maxthon are okay.
By the way, while testing the above, I observed some funny behavior that lunching an app that was not intimidated by the silent blocking helped to launch one that could not, hanging there otherwise indefinitely.
So, back to your problem better make sure that whatever you had installed was thoroughly removed, and did not leave any permanent changes to your system.
And, regarding the .pml file you've posted below, I could not take a look at it, because it requires a 64-bit version of Process Monitor, and I'm still on 32-bit system.
I am utilizing the Process Monitor from the PA list of software and I have gathered all thunderbird activity with it. I have posted the thunderbird.PML file on my Google Drive's public folder. Here's the bitly link if anyone wants to inspect it for potential clues.
http://bit.ly/jb-public