UltraCompare starting very slow, sometimes up to 30 seconds

StefanM24 · 9:22 - Nov 13#12024-11-13T09:22+00:00

Hi,

I'm using UC version 2024.00.0.26 64-bit on quite new German Windows 11 on a Core-i7 with 16GB/SSD notebook and a complete new Windows 10 Core-i7/vPRO with 32GB/SSD.
I start UC mostly from Explorer context menu.

On both systems I notice that UC sometimes takes "ages" (ranging from 10 to about 30 seconds) to start. Files to compare are text files about 2-3 MB size. I have a compare option active to ignore all text between lines starting with ".data" and ending with ".enddata". This region contains hex encoded binary data and looks like this:

Code: Select all

.data VIEWINFO
0000: 6F00000001000000 FFFF01000D004347 5458566965775374 6174650400010000
0020: 0000000000080100 002C000000020000 0003000000FFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFF8FFFF
0040: FFE1FFFFFF000000 00000000002D0500 0002030000010000 0001000000010000
0060: 00FFFEFF0F410070 0070006C00690063 006100740069006F 006E004900740065
0080: 006D0000000000
.enddata

But even if I start UC fresh from taskbar (I use UC quite often) it takes about 4 sec until empty UC window is shown. If I then click on "Text" it takes about another 7-8 sec until I see left and right file and I can then start dragging files to compare.

Is this normal? What else can be the cause of this slow behavior?

Thanks,
Stefan

Mofi · 7:23 - Nov 14#22024-11-14T07:23+00:00

The start time of 64-bit English UltraCompare Professional 2024.00.0.26 is 1.7694851 seconds from first file system access by uc.exe on start to last file system access (closing file %ProgramFiles%\IDM Computer Solutions\UltraCompare\DropHere\uc_f_second.html) according to a Process Monitor recording with showing immediately the an empty text comparison session (not the default start page). The application window with the two text file comparison panes is shown after about a second or 1.2 s. It cannot be really measured how long it takes until an application window is shown on starting a Windows GUI executable without making a video. That startup time was measured after UltraCompare was running already before. The files of UltraCompare were already in Windows file cache and the anti-malware application checked the files already before.

The start time is 2.1105561 seconds also measured with Process Monitor on first start of UltraCompare after a Windows 11 23H2 restart and Windows 11 finished starting all services running in background including the automatically delayed started services. No file of UltraCompare was in Windows file cache in this case.

Processor is an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8850H CPU @ 2.60GHz. Storage media is a Kingston KXG502NV1T02 NVMe.

Anti-malware applications (more than once) are running in background (not Windows Defender) on all starts of UltraCompare.

I can make the same measurements later also on two much older computers with Windows 7 (one with Windows Defender, another one with a different anti-malware application) if you are interested in.

It looks like the startup time on your computers is double to the startup time on my computer.

A startup time of 20 to 30 seconds is definitely not typical on running immediately a text file comparison. But there was not written anything about the file sizes of the two compared files. The 20 to 30 seconds could be typical if the compare files have several 100 MB.

When I close the text compare session opened already on startup of UltraCompare Professional and click on the first button Text for opening again a two files text comparison session, the text comparison window is shown immediately in less than a second.

StefanM24 · 11:47 - Nov 19#32024-11-19T11:47+00:00

Hi,

I did a fresh reboot and checked UC startup time imediatelly after login. I noticed that UC starts as fast as expected. But UC start-up time degrades the longer Windows 10/11 are not rebooted. I don't know how to check what may be the cause. There is plenty of free RAM and even Windows' task manager does show a normal CPU usage.

Mofi · 14:59 - Nov 19#42024-11-19T14:59+00:00

There can be used the free Windows Sysinternals (Microsoft) tool Process Monitor to find out what is the cause of the long start-up time. Process Monitor must be run as administrator to be able to log all file system, registry and network accesses and thread activities.

There should be added the column Completion Time by right clicking on the column headers and clicking in context menu on Select Columns. I have this column positioned between the columns Time of Day and Process Name as second column. This column shows how long the operation needed to complete.

I recommend to define the filter first with Process Name is uc.exe then Include and let the Exclude filters as predefined. Start UltraCompare as usual and then stop capturing (third icon on toolbar or Ctrl+E) in Process Monitor. Next search in the list of records for a longer completion time. If there is a suspicious long completion time found, open the Filter window once again (Ctrl+L) uncheck the Include filter for uc.exe and look if another process is active during the long operation which might be the cause of the long operation.