Program is running very slow
Posted by Sinclair Hughes, Last modified by Sinclair Hughes on 27 September 2022 03:35 PM

Use the 'Database Speed' report in Reports > System to give an indication of speed across the network.  If the average speed is:

  • less than 1ms - very good
  • 1 - 2.5ms - okay
  • 2.5 - 4ms - slow(ish)
  • more than 4ms - slow, needs attention 

Check these:

  • Printers.  
    • Delete any printer drivers that are not used. 
    • Make sure you can do a 'Test' print at the Windows level.
    • In SPM/PHM
      Because the text editors in the program use the fonts that are provided by the printer, if these are not available it can slow down the program while it searches for alternate fonts to use.
      • make sure the correct printers are selected in Setup > Workstation > Configuration.  If the font colour is red it means the printer is offline or is unavailable.
      • check the trays are selected in Setup > Printers and that you can do a test print using the 't' button.

  • Windows updates
    • Check there are not any Windows updates waiting to be applied or waiting for a restart of your computer.

  • Network
    • If you are using a wireless connection, make sure you have the full four-bar connection signal (wireless will always be slower than using an ethernet cable)
    • Replace the network cable (it's surprising how often this fixes the problem)
    • Connect to a different network switch
    • Change the network adapter to use IPv4 ahead of IPv6 IPv4 before IPv6 network configuration
  • Virus-checker. 
  • SQL Server Transaction log file is very large.  This should seldom need to get over 1GB.  Check the SQL backup script includes a function to Truncate the Transaction Log.

  • Are you using Hyper-V virtual machines and does the server(s) have Broadcom network cards?  If yes, there is a known problem caused by the Virtual Machine Queues (VMQ) function that is known to cause significant network speed problems and turning it off instantly Improves the performance. 
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2902166

  • Technical - On-premise installations.
    • Using Notepad, open the spm.ini file in the Incisive program directory and find the entry starting "mdb=" and make sure the path to the shared directory does actually exist and that the User has 'Modify' permissions for that directory.