Hangs while attempting to navigate network drives.

[Straminator]

Hello,

I posted (mostly) the following to support@xyplorer.com but no response for a couple days now so I'll resend it here.

I’ve been a multi-year user of XYplorer and generally very happy with the product. Recently I upgraded to Windows 7 and at the same time I upgraded to the latest XYplorer (tried a few XYplorer updates as well). I’m experiencing a problem that typically occurs when I select a network drive that has a lot of folders. Sometimes the network drive has a red “X” on it, but sometimes it does not. To see the problem all I do is click on the network drive and then XYplorer seems to hang, eventually XYplorer reports that it’s “Not responding” and I often have to kill the program via “Task Manager”.

I’m guessing there’s a setting that I need to change in XYplorer to improve the handling of large directory structures, I can’t seem to find the magic setting. As you can imagine it’s very frustrating when this happens. I've changed so many settings now that I can't find my way back to the defaults.

Question 1. Any idea of "General" or "Advanced" settings that I should try?
Question 2. Is there a way to change all settings back to the default while preserving my catalog and tag customizations?
Question 3. If no answer for #2 then any way to reset everything back to default? I assume deleting the XYplorer.ini will do the trick.
Question 4. Can I enable some debug option in XYPlorer so that when the hext hang occurs I can send a log file to XYplorer for analysis?

Thanks,

Brian

[Straminator]

Forgot to mention I'm running Windows 7 with SP1, 32-bit, 4GB RAM. XYplorer v10.90.

Thanks,

Brian

[nas8e9]

There are indeed some options you can try:

Configuration > General:
- Tree > Check existence of subfolders in tree > In network locations as well, should be cleared.
Configuration > Extended:
- Auto-Refresh > Auto-Refresh > Include network locations, should be cleared;
- Icons > Use generic icons for super-fast browsing, should be enabled. If you want to keep specific icons for local browsing, you need to enable: But only in network locations;
- Icons > Show icons overlay: if enabled: In network locations as well, should be disabled;
- Miscellaneous > Assume that servers are available, should be enabled.
Configuration > Startup & Exit:
- No network browsing on startup, should be enabled;
- Cache network servers, should be enabled.

[Straminator]

Thanks for the info.

I just made all of the changes, I'll reply back if I continue to see problems.

Maybe an enhancement suggestion would be a single config checkbox to optimize for network performance (the config tool in XYplorer could then make all these changes automatically and maybe grey them out if the optimize for network performance is slected).

[j_c_hallgren]

I posted (mostly) the following to support@xyplorer.com but no response for a couple days now so I'll resend it here.

I suspect that Don is taking a vacation/holiday because there's some spam here that I reported yesterday and it's still here and the only times that happens is when Don is off-line in some far off place.

[Straminator]

OK.

On the network location that used to hang most frequently, it takes a very long time before the directories appear (almost 1 minute). I use Windows explorer at the same network location and the directories appear right away, I'm confident my network connection is good. I'm open to more ideas but I might have to jump ship soon if I can't get this resolved. I'll check back later, I'll try to do more troubleshooting of my own.

[Straminator]

I did a little more poking around, I cannot find an option in the XYplorer config that seems to make this problem go away. Here are some more observations:

1. I can reproduce the problem if I go to the network folder that is most problematic, I then arrow down in the folder tree while the file pane displays the contents of each folder as I move along. Soon I reach a folder that takes a long time to display in the file pane.

2. Whenever I see the problem I notice XYplorer allocating more memory (via task manager) until eventually the file pane is updated.

3. When I first start XYplorer I see it utilizes about 6.5MB of Memory (private working set), when I go to my network location that is causing me fits I see the memory allocation increase ever so slowly to about 11.5MB before the file pane is updated. Memory allocation seems very slow for some reason. As it swelled from 6.5MB to 11.5MB it took almost one minute.

Is there a way to load XYplorer in a memory hog mode (since I'm not running many other applications), maybe by allocating more memory initially then I won't have this problem?

Anyway, I'm hoping this will offer some clues. I disabled my virus software "real time protection" but that didn;t seem to change anything.

Thanks,

Brian

[nas8e9]

@Straminator: It sounds counter-intuitive, but could you try confirming it with a clean profile as described here, just on the off-chance that some combination of settings is causing this?

[avsfan]

For what it's worth, I have found that things work best if I initially connect to my network drives with Explorer -- then XY doesn't seem to have any delays or difficulties accessing the drives. If, however, I don't access the drives with Explorer first, and instead try only connecting with XY, things aren't so good... It's just become part of my standard operation upon login or restart -- just fire up Explorer, browse to the network drives, and then start XY and all is well...

It'd definitely be nice not to have to do that, though!

[Straminator]

I tried a fresh copy of XYplorer in it's own folder and I still have the problem. I also tried running Windows explorer to hit each network drive prior to running XYplorer, the problem remains.

[Straminator]

Anybody have any further troubleshooting / debugging ideas? I'm stuck.

[Straminator]

Last entry from me on this issue. As it turns out, my company runs some security software that is causing the problems. I tried another file manager and it too hangs when attempting to access network drives. Downloaded a utility called process monitor from sysinternals and it shows me how "Big Brother" is trying to create a file in some hidden inaccessible (to me) folder on my local hard drive. I see the file is sometimes able to be created but other times it just keeps spinning and cannot be created. The filename it's trying to create has the signature of my company name (Big Brother). In a nutshell this problem is not an XYplorer issue. I just wanted to clear the air.

Thanks to those who offered to help.

Straminator

[admin]

Thanks for clearing the air.

[roxyplo]

It has nothing to do with any corporate security issues.

See another thread on the same issue where Don says it is a bug: http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9188

[RalphM]

Que? (What?)
Sorry, but that post didn't make any sense to me...