Designer eats 100% CPU and is very slow

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Wed May 11, 2005 7:37 am

When I try to edit jobs from my workstation today the Designer chews up all available CPU for a very long time; dragging a link end from one position on the canvas to another takes more than a minute.

When the same job in the same project is opened from another workstation using the same user-id the response times are normal.

I've de-installed DS (and removed all physical DS files on the local machine), re-installed and rebooted to no avail. My network response times are the same as the other PCs. I've just done both a virus scan and defragmentation run. I've looked at the running processes to see if there are different ones from the other systems or if I find something I can't identify. The system is still very slow. The network here peforms automated updates in the background - so I thought that maybe because I re-booted I might have gotten a package installed that others did not have, but I've rebooted the other test PC and it responds normally in DSDesign.

I've run out of things to check for - perhaps someone here could suggest other aspects to look at; I am hesitant to ask the IT department to re-install this system for several reasons so I will do that only as a last resort.

Frustrated since I can't design jobs today...

T42 · Post by **T42** » Wed May 11, 2005 12:41 pm

It really sounds like you got yourself in a really nasty feedback loop somewhere. Hitting on my sources, there appears to be a lack of mention about this problem.

Hit up Ascential Support, even though I doubt they would be able to duplicate your problem. But then, you may get lucky.

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Thu May 12, 2005 12:21 am

T42 & others. The problem is now gone, but I'll be darned if I know why or how. I went to yet another workstation to work on this job (having wasted a half-day trying to find and correct the problem on my workstation). I moved the 30 or so canvas objects around so that they were compact and could fit on one display screen and saved/recompiled the job. Then I closed it, went back to my workstation and -bingo- the 100% CPU was gone and I could work on the job again.

I did re-install my VGA driver between the time that it didn't work and when I tested it again - but I'm certainly not going to provoke the error to find out what the actual solution was.

Thanks!

T42 · Post by **T42** » Thu May 12, 2005 4:01 pm

It does sound like something in your job's OSH code or whatever triggered a latent bug. Did you save that job? Are you able to restore it and repeat the crazy CPU action?

If so, PLEASE hit Support with that.

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Fri May 13, 2005 2:11 am

T42, I was so busy trying to get the job to work on my workstation that I didn't keep a "buggy" copy

T42 · Post by **T42** » Fri May 13, 2005 10:59 am

Dang. Foiled again!

thompsonp · Post by **thompsonp** » Tue May 17, 2005 5:44 am

I have seen this problem in version 7.1.

The last place I worked had several jobs that exhibited this behaviour and a support call was raised. Unfortunately it wasn't completely resolved. The problem looked like a memory leak as it happened when a job was left open in Designer for prolonged periods. The easiest way to avoid it was to close Designer periodically. Also check your windows swap / paging file is a suitably large size. We found that the PC's were using a swap file that was only half the suggested size. Increasing the size seemed to increase the period we could use Designer without having to restart it.

I am working elsewhere now but saw this same behaviour yesterday. There was 100% CPU activity and only about 8MB memory available on the client PC. Closing Designer and restarting cured the problem.

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Tue May 17, 2005 7:55 am

I just had the problem crop up again - in my case my PC has a Gb of main memory and doesn't come close to swapping... but if I take a Px job with about 20 items on the canvas and remove a stage so that I have an "open" link the machine starts slowing down and taking 100% cpu until such time as I "close" the link. Very odd behaviour.

vmcburney · Post by **vmcburney** » Tue May 17, 2005 5:54 pm

I've got the same problem on my Windows XP machine using version 7.5.1. As soon as I delete a stage CPU usage ramps up to 100% and stays there for any action I try to take in the job. I am logging in as a normal domain user, the only fix I have been able to come up with is to run the Designer as a different user (right mouse click and run as on the icon). If I choose the admin login that I used to install the software it runs Designer and does not get the performance problem.

We are going to move to version 7.5.1A and hoping they have fixed this bug.

ArndW · Post by **ArndW** » Wed May 18, 2005 12:52 am

vmcburney - can you keep us posted on whether this fixed the problem?

Thanks,

-Arnd.