wintotal still slow and locking up daily

[CRae1]

We have been having trouble daily with Wintotal for years! We have replaced all our workstations, upgraded our network, upgraded internet, etc. etc. Specs: our network that consists of 6 client workstations running XP professional SP3 (all top of the line, 3-4gig ram, 3 ghz processors) and our server is an hp proliant - 4 gig ram, 2 dual core 3ghz processors. We upgraded to new 1gig Cisco switch. We only use outlook, wintotal and Internet explorer. We also have symantec endpoint running and are excluding the server and wintotal files from the virus scans (ie. exceptions). We just upgraded our internet to 4meg up/4 meg down. Still we have lock up issues while clicking around the forms from column to column. We get the hour glass many times a day. We have optimized the settings in wintotal (eg. to NOT find prior appraisals, reduced image quality to 50, etc.). We also noticed yesterday that the memory usage of winform.exe was at 600meg. Not sure if there is a memory leak or something going on with wintotal? We have had 2 network folks investigate our server and workstations and they said everything is looks good. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated! ... YES, we have spoken to wintotal tech folks NUMEROUS times.

 

[Paul Stansberry]

Hi CRae -

I'm sorry we haven't gotten your issue resolved yet. If you can PM me your customer number and contact information, that will help me find you in our system so that we can get back in touch with you.

 

[MTGIACC]

WinTotal Tips

I am working a similar issue for a client. Our issue began when we replaced two desktops with updated hardware. I have been supporting WinTotal for this client for a number of years and there have always been some intermittent performance issues over this time period. We are using Aurora with a similar set up (Client/Server) as yours. WinTotal is very slow to release memory when closing reports. You can check this with Task Manager. If you have multiple reports open and then close out of them and shut down WinTotal, it may take as long as three minutes for Winform.exe to release memory and finally stop running on the workstation. I don’t know of a fix for this yet but if your end users are aware of this it may help them to adjust how they use the program. Also WinTotal is very sensitive to user profiles or user accounts within the program. Make sure that each user has their own profile and that no one is sharing a user account. Each user should have their own WinTotal account and only be logged in to one workstation at a time. I hope this helps.

 

[incognito]

My WinTotal (Athena) locks up at least once every day. The only way out is to kill it in Task Manager. Everything since the last save is lost. A re-boot is required. Happens most frequently when I have 2 appraisals open at once, or if I use the Internet for an extended period while the appraisal is open.

Additionally, about once a day, my screen goes haywire, requiring that I exit and enter again, but no losses.

I have given up with tech support a long time ago (on these issues). All of my associates (we are not on a networked version, and have independently licensed versions) have the same problems) have the same problems. My last talk with tech support (on these issues) indicated that these are known issues which will not be fixed. Unfortunately, I still pay EVERY DOLLAR EVERY YEAR that an Aurora user does, but do not get the respect/repair of known software issues that Aurora users do.

You say "than change to Aurora". For reasons not worth getting into, that will not work for us. You would think that I would at least be entitled to a lesser annual fee than an Aurora user, given Al A Modes' stance on not fixing known Athena problems...

So suck it up, CRae1, this appears to be the status quo for many (and frankly a black eye for Al A Mode in my opinion).

 

[CRae1]

wintotal

Hi MTGIACC: thank you for the suggestions. Our profiles are setup correctly and we rarely have 2 reports open on each workstation. I have been talking to Wintotal tech support and they did some extensive testing on our workstations -- looks like symantec endpoint might be the culprit -- doing too much file scanning prior to reading and writing to local and network disk. I will be removing symantec entirely from server and workstations and we'll see what happens to performance.
I will post back after we resolve the issue.

Incognito: are you running symantec anti-virus?

 

[incognito]

Hi CRae1,

No, I have learned that ANY Symantec or Norton products are simply bad news. I have heard more horror stories (both here and elsewhere) about those programs causing issues. A shame, because many years ago, Norton Utilities were great...

PS: FULLY removing Symantec products is NOTORIOUSLY difficult, and rarely comprehensive, leaving pieces of itself everywhere, which can continue to cause issues. I understand that out there somewhere is a Symantec removal product which works pretty well.

Don't uninstall and assume you have fully removed ANY symantec product!

 

[David Beasley]

Don't uninstall and assume you have fully removed ANY Windows product!

I fixed your quote for you. It isn't just Symantec, it's every Windows app since Win95-specific apps came into existence. It's called the Windows registry, and it has entries for everything that is on your computer and probably hundreds of things that aren't. To totally get rid of any modern Windows app, one needs a trusted registry cleaner or a very good Windows Registry working knowledge and Notepad.

Just deleting the program directory and running MSCONFIG in order to clean up all the autostart apps doesn't work anymore. Hasn't since 1995, sadly. BUT, if you can get the autoloading apps 'remarked out' of system.ini, win.ini, boot.ini and the Startup folder and can wipe any further references from the registry, a program will stop loading - even if the app's files are still on the computer somewhere. If it doesn't, d/l Malwarebytes and give it a whirl - you have bigger issues than commercial malware (which includes most AV programs IMO).

 

[David Beasley]

You have all the hardware you could want, so the issue is not with the actual pieces. You also failed to mention which iteration of "Wintotal" you're using that continues to lock up, Athena? Aurora? WinTotal 2010? Older?

You have twice the hardware I have (so far as CPU, RAM, etc) and I run WinTotal Aurora here, across a 1gig ethernet network, off of a server that is identical to mine. WINXP SP3 on both boxes. Loads and runs like a champ. I will get a pause here and there if my secretary is also working in WinTotal, but nothing like you're experiencing. No consistent lock ups.

Without knowing which version of WT you're using, everyone here is guessing since they all act differently.

My first guess is that your network isn't configured properly - since you appear to be trying to run it across a network. A quick test for my theory is simple - how well does WinTotal actually run on the server? If the issue exists on the host machine, then the problem is likely not on the network or clients.

Also, among all these Clydesdale-like computers you have, you didn't once list any GPU or video card specs. If you are using built-in video cards, cut your posted RAM in half, if not by 60%. When a computer has an integrated GPU or video card, 99 times out of 100 it doesn't have its own VRAM, it shares the system RAM with the rest of the computer. I only mention this since you say you're getting consistent lockups while "clicking around the forms", which to me, wreaks of video faults. Could be low memory, could be ill-configured video settings. Could be outdated OR beta-level (too new) video drivers.

Can't comment on the app's memory usage. 600MB should sound high to me, but I've seen larger memory committments from an Internet Explorer session with several tabs open that had live ads rotating through them.

 

[CRae1]

wintotal

Hi Dave,

Thanks for taking the time to address our issue.

Version of wintotal: Aurora V5.0/ with dec 22 latest release
Video card: amd 760G

We aren't running our of RAM on clients or workstations -- often when it locks we get a wintotal exception.

We ran some disk access test speeds and the read and write is extremely slow (on workstations and server), thus slowing down wintotal and possibly timing out wintotal or network read/writes.

It seems it's due to symantec scanning the files too extensively. We are in the process of testing this theory by removing symantec and then loading sophos AV.

What AV are you running? how many workstations do you have running wintotal?

I believe wintotal is just as slow running on server -- I haven't used it extensively on the server.

 

[jtinmichigan]

I found that symantec and norton were causing all sorts of problems last year. A buddy is a pretty experienced geek and said all they use is AVG (free version). I have found that it is good on the av side and does not interfere with aurora. No problems in a year on that score. (cnet downloads for free AVG)