Strange- fast system, slow dock?

from WinCustomize Forums
I started using OD at work. I liked it so much I bought the pro version. It runs great at work on an AMD ~1Ghz machine running Win2000 with 256mb ram. I just got a new system at home and I installed OD there and it is VERY slow. The new system is P4-3Ghz with 1Gb of ram. The whole system runs noticably slower, Firefox in particular runs slow and sluggish. IE runs better. As soon as I unload OD the machine starts flying... zip, zip, zip...

What is OD doing to this machine? It should be fast, at least as good as the older machine, but it just drags everything down. I uninstalled it a couple of times... cleaned it out good and reinstalled it, but the result is the same everytime... slow.

There is very little on this machine that could be interfering with it. Could it be a video problem? It seemed to get worse after I added a graphics card to replace the onboard graphics.

Thoughts?

jw
objectdock
10,476 views 30 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
that's weird - my system has an AMD athlon xp 1.8ghz & 1gb mem, currently running an ati radeon 9200 vid card and my system flies by with all of it - even if i use on-board grahpics w/ my motherboard everything goes extremely fast
maybe it's intel i did notice that when i had my gateway laptop, which had a 1.2 celeron processor, that object dock was slower than my pc - and sometimes would lag if i hadn't used the dock for a while. but, can't tell ya anything else. sorry - hope it gets figured out
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Slowdowns are usually caused by bad-behaving docklets (eg weather, MSN, Web search etc, etc).

Try removing them 1 by 1 until it comes good to find the culprit.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The only docklets running are the ones that came with the install, but I'll try that and see.

Thanks,
jw
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I tried it without any docklets and it didn't help... meanwhile, back at work the Dock, with several docklets running, is going along nicely on a much slower computer.

There is definitely something about the new PC that does not like ObjectDock. I hate to give it up, but it's much too slow unless I find a solution.

I have not verified it, but it looks like it's taking a lot of processor time or at least having to "think" a lot.

jw
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
What is your setting for:

display properties->settigns tab->advanced->troubleshoot tab?

The only docklets running are the ones that came with the install


Yes, but it's still possible that they'll need configuring or updating to solve your problem.

What items do you have left on the dock after removing all the docklets?

Failing all this, an email to the Stardock support team is probably required.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Just a suggestion....put your Systray on it's own "standard" dock with no other items and no animations, even for mouseover. The systray seems to have a performance hit depending on how you use it.

You might also want to check folder links. If the folder is very large it will slow things down as OD has to "read" what's in the folder to show it.
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top

It seemed to get worse after I added a graphics card to replace the onboard graphics

Did you disable the onboard graphics adapter, or set the card slot (AGP or PCI) to initialize first?

Some card manufacturers recommend uninstalling the old graphic drivers before installing the new card drivers.

You could pull the card, and test with onboard graphics to see if the performance is okay - if so, you can rule out the other hardware and concentrate on the video settings and drivers.

Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It seemed to get worse after I added a graphics card to replace the onboard graphics.


It behooves me to read the original post right through !

concentrate on the video settings and drivers.


Definitely good advice...

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hmmmm... so it could be the video... I'll try everything suggested here and let you know how it turns out.

Thanks!

jweaks
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yes... it is a video problem or at least video related. I believe I almost have it figured out.

jw
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
This is happening to me, too. It's really getting irritating. Hopefully it's fixable.

My system:
AMD Athlon 2400+ (Barton) (1.8Ghz)
Radeon 9200. (128 Ram on it, also has the latest drivers.)
NF7-S ABIT motherboard, with an nForce 2 chipset. Also updated with the latest chipset drivers.
512 DDR Ram.

Whenever I min. something that's fullscreen - especially firefox, it chugs, alot. Takes atleast 1-2 seconds for the desktop to show up. It's not quite as bad when the application isn't fullscreen. My resolution is 1280x1024. I've tried lowering it, but, that didn't help either. I've disabled all of the docklets, that didn't work. Also tried changing the performance thinger all the way down. Also didn't make a difference. It's still on the default settings, so, unless there's a folder already in one of those, I don't think it's lagging because it's trying to read out of a folder.

Anyway, any help on this would be really appreciated. Looking foward to what you've found out, jweaks.

Thanks.

/edit
I've also got SP2 installed. If that makes any difference.

/edit
I've just made another post at WinMatrix, they've offered a few other solutions/theories.

http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6161&st=0&#entry73344
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I wish I could tell you what to do, but I'm not exactly sure what "fixed" my problem. I have a Radeon 9250 with one 1 analog output and 1 DVI output. When I just had one monitor on the analog side ObjectDock did not work right.

I made sure the onboard graphics were disabled. That helped some, but OD was still slow and acted like it didn't like the video setup with one LCD monitor on the analog.

I installed the drivers that came with the Radeon 9250 and that choked up the system completely. I downloaded the latest version of "catalyst" from the ATI site and things started working better.

I had a second monitor on order. When it arrived I put it on the DVI output (dual monitors) and after I was happy with the video and drivers I tried ObjectDock again to see if there was any difference and it was great... very fast, no more problems.

Other things:
I did some Registry cleaning with some tools found on the Web.
I used the "Catalyst Uninstaller" from the ATI site to get the original drivers cleaned out before installing Catalyst 5.10.
I also installed ATI's "Hydravsion" but that was later.
It took some hunting but I finally found all the ObjectDock related files and settings that are NOT removed when you do an uninstall... cleaned them out... and did a fresh OD install.

Good Luck,
jweaks
Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm having the exact same problems (it seems to appear really just with firefox and thunderbird) with an AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 1gb DDR 3200 ram, A-BIT AV8 motherboard, ATI Radeon 9200 128mb video card.

I'll try doing what you said jweaks, thanks, if it doesn't work I plan on getting a Radeon 9800 soon that will hopefully fix it.

edit: oh yeah, windows xp sp2 also
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well that fixed it, all I did was norton my registry (which probably wasn't it) and then used the catalyst uninstaller to uninstall my ATI drivers then installed the newest (5.10) ATI drivers.

Thanks jweaks!

I hope this fixes Vhaeos' problems too
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Oh wow, now I feel stupid, the drivers didn't fix it at all, it's because it activated my second display (my TV, even though it isn't on) after reinstalling and I never turned it off. When I turned off the second display it went back to being sluggish (so I guess I'll be leaving it on ) So that's the fix apparently (must be a radeon thing) just enable a second display.
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I agree... it has something to do with the "second" display... it's like the Radeon video makes ObjectDock think it's working with the wrong display? In may case I'm pretty sure it was treating the analog output like it was the secondary display even though it was the primary.

When I activated the DVI output as the primary display all was well.

jweaks
Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Okay, I saw another thread, but can't remember where, but here is what was done with the ATI 9200:

Uninstall drivers and control panel, reboot, reinstall drivers-but not the control panel.
This worked for several others using ATI 9200 with Catalyst control panel 5.9

jweaks ahs the best solution. The Catalyst Control panel seems to have difficulty if you try to apply windowblinds to it also, even though it has a skin or two of its own
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks logic, I'll try that.

Here's another anwser I got from StarDock tech support.
This may be a windows layering issue. If ObjectDock is closed, everything runs fine correct? Microsoft didn't make the Windows layering in 2K and XP, very robust. If there is a program that is alpha-blended (transparencies), the layers start having problems and visual performance slows down.

Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done as it is a Microsoft issue. Apparently this is supposed to be addressed in Vista.

Nick / OrbitJuice - Technical Advisor
[Stardock Technical Support]
Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I was using the Catalyst control panel, but later took it out. It seemed to be a little unstable for me. I did the complete uninstall again and then just let Windows get the drivers from the ATI folder. No Catalyst control.

Everything is working well as of this moment. I love having two displays!

jweaks
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hello,
I've the same problem but with another system configuration. Moreover ObjectDock seems to run well on a lot of systems and i hope there is one with a similar configuration.

The Problem which occur (only) when ObjectDock is running:
- maximising windows is a bit slower
- minimising not full screen windows is a bit slower, minimising full screen windows is very slow
- start up of applikations (for example firefox and eclipse) is noticeable slower!

My system:
- WinXp SP2
- Athlon XP 1800+
- 1GB DDR2700
- NVidia GeForce FX 5200 (Forceware 66.93)
- two displays

Is there anybody with a similar configuration and a well running ObjectDock?

mcmatt
Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Just a blind guess... but I think OD has some trouble sometimes with two displays. At least that was my experience. I'd try it with one display just to see what it does and I'd also try to switch the displays.

jweaks
Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The changes with the display don't fix the problem unfortunately.

But: Without the option "represent minimized windows by their screenshots" (i love this!) minimising is much faster.

The problem which confuses me most is the starting up time of firefox (first window). It's extrem. With ObjectDock running it required at least three times as long.

mcmatt
Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well I've done everything I think I can: I tried uninstalling and reinstalling before and still it needed to have 2 displays in order to work well. Now I've uninstalled again, got a new video card (radeon 9800 pro) installed 5.11 drivers with control panel (not catalyst control center) and it still has to have 2 displays in order to work properly, I've actually found now that pretty much everything having to do with object desktop is slower unless I have two displays enabled (most noticeable with firefox, slowdown of cursor xp, slowdown of object dock, slowdown of windowFX effects). And actually if I disable the display and then re-enable it there are still problems with windowsFX that I have to restart and keep the second display enabled in order to fix. What a weird problem.
Reply #25 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Haha, bit of a late response, but, oh well. The control panel trick didn't seem to make any difference, neither did turning on a second monitor.

Upon further investigation, it would seem anything that has transparency, and takes up a decent part of the screen, will really lag my system. I'm not sure why.

I'd like to try and find something common between our systems, since, because of McMatt's account, it seemingly isn't ATI. (Which I was really hoping it was.. was going to buy a nVidia card, oh well.)

What chipset does everyones motherboard have, what motherboard are you all running, etc, things like that.

NF7-S ABIT, with an nForce 2 chipset.

That's mine. Doubt that has anything to do with the problem, but, may as well see if we're running the same thing.