2004 Lags

[willmikebe]

Hello Everyone,
We recently upgrade our computers and AutoCAD software and we're now experiencing a strange problem. We keep all of our drawings in a directory on our O:\ drive. Under the O:\ drive, there are many directories besides the Drawings directory and under the Drawings directory, there are MANY other directories. While in AutoCAD, if we use any kind of file dialog box such as Open or Save, etc., we get a significant lag when we browse out to the Drawings directory. This directory only contains about 5 files, but like I said, it also has 24 subdirectories. Those subdirectories contain a total of 22,410 files in 1,585 folders.
We did not experience this lag using AutoCAD 2000 on our old Windows 2000 machines and we don't experience it with any other software other than AutoCAD on our current machines. Has anyone else experienced this? If so have you fixed it and how?

Thanks very much,
Mike

PS - We're using Windows XP Pro, AutoCAD 2004 and the computers exceed the minimum requirements for all programs used on these machines.

[mjfarrell]

I know the version numbers are different than you posted,
only does this offer any insight:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=2864089&linkID=2475323

[arcadia_x27]

I have the same situation as yours at my company. Ive found that reducing hte amout of files in a dorectory speeds up Acad when opening drawings over the network. I stil lget some lag time, i havent figured out a way to totally eliminate it but i have brought it down to a manageable level. My suggestion is to maybe place fiels that you have archived but arent using much in a seperate folder and keep a folder for only youre more current files. That might help cut down the lag time a bit. I find that abou100 to 150 .dwg files in a folder is about the tolerance of ACAD 2004 before it starts to really lag.

[richard.binning]

Hello Everyone,
We recently upgrade our computers and AutoCAD software and we're now experiencing a strange problem. We keep all of our drawings in a directory on our O:\ drive. Under the O:\ drive, there are many directories besides the Drawings directory and under the Drawings directory, there are MANY other directories. While in AutoCAD, if we use any kind of file dialog box such as Open or Save, etc., we get a significant lag when we browse out to the Drawings directory. This directory only contains about 5 files, but like I said, it also has 24 subdirectories. Those subdirectories contain a total of 22,410 files in 1,585 folders.
We did not experience this lag using AutoCAD 2000 on our old Windows 2000 machines and we don't experience it with any other software other than AutoCAD on our current machines. Has anyone else experienced this? If so have you fixed it and how?

Thanks very much,
Mike

PS - We're using Windows XP Pro, AutoCAD 2004 and the computers exceed the minimum requirements for all programs used on these machines.
Using Windows explorer, browse out to a folder containing autocad drawing files. Right click on a drawing and look at the context menu. Click on the "digital signature" item. Is that checkbox checked? If so, uncheck it.

Heres a document to walk you through it.

[willmikebe]

Thanks to everyone for your replies. Well I tried all of the ideas you mentioned, but unfortunately still have the lag. It's beginning to look like I'm just going to have to deal with it. I'm not sure yet, but I'm going to keep trying. Thanks again!

[richard.binning]

Thanks to everyone for your replies. Well I tried all of the ideas you mentioned, but unfortunately still have the lag. It's beginning to look like I'm just going to have to deal with it. I'm not sure yet, but I'm going to keep trying. Thanks again!
We may just solve this one yet! Try the following:

There’s a common problem in Windows XP that can make network browsing very slow.

If the 'My Network Places' folder contains a shortcut to a network share, then each refresh of the explorer window will attempt to read icon information from every file in the remote location, causing the system to slow to a crawl.

Removing all shortcuts from 'My Network Places' will return the system response to normal.

Every time you open a file via a UNC name, Windows XP will automatically add another shortcut to the 'My Network Places' folder - so the issue tends to get worse over time.

You can prevent the automatic addition of shortcuts by setting HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoRecentDocsNetHood to 1.

Similar issues affect the Start menu and Desktop - placing a shortcut to a network resource in either location can drastically slow down system response, particularly when the network resource is unavailable. Shortcuts to Domains or Machines don't suffer from these problems as they always have the same icon.
There are methods of accessing the network that will avoid this performance problem:

Method 1
Create a drive map (http://www.ss64.com/nt/net_share.html) and use this to browse the network files.

Method 2
Create a shortcut to explorer.exe and pass the UNC name of the resource.
e.g.
explorer /e, \\Server\FileShare

[whdjr]

Richard,

I think you might be on to something. I have a question regarding this kind of thing and maybe it needs to be moved I don't know? We use Windows roaming profiles on our workstations so that all the settings are saved on the server, but now we are experiencing a problem where when we delete things from the desktop or from My Network Places for instance when we reboot the machine they are still there.

Any thoughts on this?

[info1]

Richard,

I think you might be on to something. I have a question regarding this kind of thing and maybe it needs to be moved I don't know? We use Windows roaming profiles on our workstations so that all the settings are saved on the server, but now we are experiencing a problem where when we delete things from the desktop or from My Network Places for instance when we reboot the machine they are still there.

Any thoughts on this?
Sorry, I have no experience with roaming profiles. We adopted a sort of roaming profile by moving all personalized content (My Documents, etc.) to a mapped drive that each user is connected to by a script at login. This J drive is is always mapped for each user so that anything stored their is only accessible by their login and is always available wherever they are logged in from.

RLB

[Mike.Perry]

Hi

Sounds like the User's Roaming Profile is not being successfully written back to the Network when they log-off, therefore not updating their Roaming Profile (NTUSER.DAT).

Give the following documents on the Microsoft web site a read, hopefully they will point you in the right direction -

Files and Folders Reappear After Deletion with Roaming Profiles (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;236073)

Delete cached copies of roaming profiles (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/default.asp?url=/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/gp/15.asp)

Maximum retries to unload and update user profile (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/default.asp?url=/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/gp/351.asp)

Changes to your roaming profile are lost when you log on to a Windows XP-based computer (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;840998)

Troubleshooting Change and Configuration Management (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/default.asp?url=/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/distrib/dsef_tbs_aers.asp)

Further searching on the Microsoft web site http://www.microsoft.com/ (http://www.microsoft.com/) should turn-up a lot of information regarding Roaming Profiles.

Have a good one, Mike