michaelkenward Posted September 20, 2009 Report Share Posted September 20, 2009 Startup items apart from MEP: Ad Muncher, Kaspersky Internet Explorer, Directory Opus and TaskSWitch XP (an Alt-Tab replacement), all of which I have been using for years without any problems. The only thing I have in common with that list is Directory Opus. And I am on Vista. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul Posted September 20, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 20, 2009 The only thing I have in common with that list is Directory Opus. Interesting.... Me too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaelkenward Posted September 20, 2009 Report Share Posted September 20, 2009 Interesting.... Me too! That's three votes for DOpus. Anyone else? On another issue, anyone know how to kill MAcExp without having to invoke task manager? As others have said, the slow responsiveness of a PC during one of these events means that it can become all but impossible to recover. Is there a way to create a "batch/command" file to shut it down? For example, I have one that can stop and start a service that causes difficulties here. net stop Audiosrvnet start Audiosrv Is there a way to do the same thing for a "Process"? Then I could put a shortcut on my dektop. I would, of course, do it with Macro Express, but that is where the problem lies! I see that there are tools out there, but I would rather not install something else that could screw up my system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaelkenward Posted September 20, 2009 Report Share Posted September 20, 2009 On another issue, anyone know how to kill MAcExp without having to invoke task manager? Answering myself, working from this page: http://www.technospot.net/blogs/how-to-kil...d-line-windows/ I find that this works: TASKKILL /PID 2308 /F I assume that the PID will not change between sessions! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaelkenward Posted September 20, 2009 Report Share Posted September 20, 2009 I assume that the PID will not change between sessions! Bad assumption. Try this: TASKKILL /IM /Macexp.exe /F Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnjoyRC Posted September 23, 2009 Report Share Posted September 23, 2009 Something that I've noticed when my workstation is crawling at slow speeds is that... like other... my CPU isn't elevated. Yet MacExp.exe Mem Usage was around 220,000k. And when I restarted it, the mem usage was around 14,300k. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Gross Posted September 24, 2009 Report Share Posted September 24, 2009 Has anyone else seen this? This morning, my computer came to almost a complete halt. Right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting Task Manager took perhaps 20 seconds, 10 seconds per click. Yet CPU usage was only 6% or so. After terminating a few processes (at 10 seconds to click on the process, another 10 seconds to get the confirmation after pressing Delete, and another 15-20 seconds actually to terminate the process) the computer remained as sluggish as ever. Then I terminated Macexp.exe and that solved the problem (no macro was running). Reloading the terminated processes and MEP has not, so far, caused any reappearance of the problem. I also experienced this same problem yesterday, but didn't realize that MEP was the probable cause. That's it! I'm so glad I found this post as I didn't even consider MEP. I've had issues with my notebook just hanging for long periods of time, as well as IE7 just going to heck in a handbasket in the last month. It also seems like our work cut our bandwith by 2/3's. I only had MEP in the system tray, I wasn't even using it. I'm going back to ME3 but I hope to be able to use MEP in the future. I'll post back if this doesn't fix it, but my computer is much better since quiting MEP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jsams Posted September 25, 2009 Report Share Posted September 25, 2009 Has anyone else seen this? This morning, my computer came to almost a complete halt. Right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting Task Manager took perhaps 20 seconds, 10 seconds per click. Yet CPU usage was only 6% or so. After terminating a few processes (at 10 seconds to click on the process, another 10 seconds to get the confirmation after pressing Delete, and another 15-20 seconds actually to terminate the process) the computer remained as sluggish as ever. Yup, I'm adding my two cents to bump this thread; this is certainly something ISS needs to be addressing. I didn't begin experiencing any significant slowdown until 4.0.4.1, released last month. I've been using MEP to automate some software test processes in my job, so the applications under test [ArcGIS software] frequently crash. [Yeah, I'm paid to break things. ] Initially, I thought it was the crashed AUT that was seizing up my virtual machine; I had no macros running, so it couldn't be MEP. I then went on vacation, and came back to discover this thread at the top of the bb. Sonuvagun, it is MEP! Terminating MEP during any slow-running or mouse/keyboard locking, the issues went away immediately. I now terminate MEP before any testing, and have not used MEP in the past week. If MEP can't be trusted even to lounge in resident memory without doing something detrimental to the OS, yeah, that's a serious bug, IMO. ISS, let us know when we can go back to using MEP... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris Posted October 14, 2009 Report Share Posted October 14, 2009 If anyone is still experiencing this rather frequently, can you please try the following for me? Go to Options > Preferences and make sure that "Auto restore the keyboard and mouse hooks" is turned off and then apply your changes. I have a working theory that this might be the cause of the problem and I'd like to test out my theory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaelkenward Posted October 14, 2009 Report Share Posted October 14, 2009 If anyone is still experiencing this rather frequently, can you please try the following for me? Go to Options > Preferences and make sure that "Auto restore the keyboard and mouse hooks" is turned off and then apply your changes. I have a working theory that this might be the cause of the problem and I'd like to test out my theory. It hasn't been turned on here for quite some time. I still see this beast from time to time, although not for the past few days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris Posted October 14, 2009 Report Share Posted October 14, 2009 Well, that blows that theory out of the water. OK, back to the drawing board. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terrypin Posted October 15, 2009 Report Share Posted October 15, 2009 Well, that blows that theory out of the water. OK, back to the drawing board. Thanks! Apologies for straying from the main topic, but ... as you've raised the subject of that setting, Chris, are you satisfied with its reliability in general please? About once a day on average I find a regular, stable macro won't activate. Typicaly it's shortkey activated. Yet directly after using Restore Keyboard & Mouse hooks it works OK. I've always had Auto restore the keyboard and mouse hooks enabled. -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phonemes Posted October 15, 2009 Report Share Posted October 15, 2009 Auto restore was not ticked in my case. I am still experiencing freezes. But I have this to add: I found some threads about freezes with the latest version (2010) of Kasperky Internet Security in the Kasperky user forum yesterday. Some users appear to have freezes very much like the ones I am seeing. I have now uninstalled 2010 and reverted to 2009 to see if this solves my problem. I need some time to corroborate things, as the freezes tend to occur only a few times a week. So, I will report back here in a week or so with the results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaelkenward Posted October 16, 2009 Report Share Posted October 16, 2009 Auto restore was not ticked in my case. I am still experiencing freezes. But I have this to add: I found some threads about freezes with the latest version (2010) of Kasperky Internet Security in the Kasperky user forum yesterday. Some users appear to have freezes very much like the ones I am seeing. I have now uninstalled 2010 and reverted to 2009 to see if this solves my problem. I need some time to corroborate things, as the freezes tend to occur only a few times a week. So, I will report back here in a week or so with the results. I use Sophos. Not Kaspersky. Slow episodes still happen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eno Nedlog Posted October 27, 2009 Report Share Posted October 27, 2009 I use Sophos. Not Kaspersky. Slow episodes still happen. I use ESET smart security, I have had Auto restore ticked and un-ticked I do have Directory Opus And I am still experiencing freezes Yesterday I had started Macro Express Pro but had not used any macros after some time my computer locked up, I killed Macro Express Pro with Process Hacker which solved the problem. Other programs may slow things down on occasions but are not unmanageable, with Process Hacker or Process Explorer I can always identify which one but I have not had to kill them. When my computer locks (which only happens when running MEP) Macro Express Pro shows no problems in either Process Hacker or Process Explorer but kill it and my computer always recovers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cory Posted November 3, 2009 Report Share Posted November 3, 2009 It happened again! ........................................... I just had this happen again. I came back from lunch and started to reply to an email for which I needed a screen shot. I loaded Snagit and it was taking forever to load. I'm not sure if the system was slow before but after loading Snagit it suddenly became unbearable. My mouse still moved but when I would click a button, move a window or anything like that there were enormous delays. I was trying to get the Task Manager up but nothing was working at all. I used the three finger salute and after what I would estimate was 15 seconds I finally got that menu, whatever it's called, and chose the Task Manager. After waiting 30 seconds nothing happened and I repeated these steps 3 times. Finally I waited more like a minute and the first Task Manager arrived. Over the next 3-4 minutes the second and third Task Managers showed up. I closed two and noticed that the CPU load was very low even though I had about 20 things open. After about 3 minutes of navigating the Task Manager processes I was able to highlight and end the MacExp.exe process and terminate. The instant I did my whole machine was instantly responsive. I have no doubt not that there's a bug in MEP but I'm wondering if Snagit had something to do with it. I'm running version 9.1.2 b304. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cory Posted November 3, 2009 Report Share Posted November 3, 2009 Another interesting Snagit observation. ........................................... After what happened above I wrote a few emails and went to launch Snagit again. It loaded but not after a few complaints about not being able to register some hotkeys. Hmmmmmm..... MEP uses Hotkeys... However Macro Express was not running and I checked that MacExp.exe was not in the processes list. I closed and reopened Snagit and it did not complain that time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul Posted November 3, 2009 Author Report Share Posted November 3, 2009 It happened again!........................................... I just had this happen again. I came back from lunch and started to reply to an email for which I needed a screen shot. I loaded Snagit and it was taking forever to load. I'm not sure if the system was slow before but after loading Snagit it suddenly became unbearable. My mouse still moved but when I would click a button, move a window or anything like that there were enormous delays. I was trying to get the Task Manager up but nothing was working at all. I used the three finger salute and after what I would estimate was 15 seconds I finally got that menu, whatever it's called, and chose the Task Manager. After waiting 30 seconds nothing happened and I repeated these steps 3 times. Finally I waited more like a minute and the first Task Manager arrived. Over the next 3-4 minutes the second and third Task Managers showed up. I closed two and noticed that the CPU load was very low even though I had about 20 things open. After about 3 minutes of navigating the Task Manager processes I was able to highlight and end the MacExp.exe process and terminate. The instant I did my whole machine was instantly responsive. I have no doubt not that there's a bug in MEP but I'm wondering if Snagit had something to do with it. I'm running version 9.1.2 b304. You have described exactly the behaviour I have seen - and I wasn't using SnagIt on these occasions although I do use it from time to time. I always have to load Task Manager at least twice, since I never see the first occurrence (it appears only as an icon in my tray) until after I've managed to kill MEP. I don't see this pattern as often as I used to, but it happened twice yesterday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eno Nedlog Posted November 5, 2009 Report Share Posted November 5, 2009 Another interesting Snagit observation............................................ After what happened above I wrote a few emails and went to launch Snagit again. It loaded but not after a few complaints about not being able to register some hotkeys. Hmmmmmm..... MEP uses Hotkeys... However Macro Express was not running and I checked that MacExp.exe was not in the processes list. I closed and reopened Snagit and it did not complain that time. People have mentioned Directory Opus, I use Directory Opus, which uses hotkeys as well as numerous other programs that do and it was because of all the Hotkeys conflicting that I used Macro Express Pro cutting out as many Hotkeys from other programs as I could, but with the dramatic slowdowns MEP causes I am now using Autohotkey and Direct Access only opening MEP and closing it as soon as finished, Could the problem be Hotkeys? As you suggest It is stupid that I am not using MEP as I should because of a bug in it, I just wish I could start using it again properly as it would save me so much time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaelkenward Posted November 5, 2009 Report Share Posted November 5, 2009 People have mentioned Directory Opus, I use Directory Opus, which uses hotkeys as well as numerous other programs that do and it was because of all the Hotkeys conflicting that I used Macro Express Pro cutting out as many Hotkeys from other programs as I could, but with the dramatic slowdowns MEP causes I am now using Autohotkey and Direct Access only opening MEP and closing it as soon as finished, Could the problem be Hotkeys? As you suggest It is stupid that I am not using MEP as I should because of a bug in it, I just wish I could start using it again properly as it would save me so much time. The possibility of a DOpus link came up when we were looking for a possible common link, and software that we might all have running. I raised it over on th Dopus equivalent of this place. It turns out that not everyone who uses this combination sees the slowdown. But the hotkeys link might bhe worth pursuing. DOpus does a lot with hotkeys. Then again, hotkeys are so widely used that it is hard to see how DOpus-heads who reported no problems could avoid the same issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cory Posted November 17, 2009 Report Share Posted November 17, 2009 Excel clipboard error possibly linked. .................................................... Please read my description of this bug I found. I've had this problem a long time ago but not recently. The reason I mention it was because one of the symptoms was the big system slowdown with zero CPU and once I killed MEP the system sped up again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eno Nedlog Posted November 27, 2009 Report Share Posted November 27, 2009 I have been using Macro Express Pro for almost two days all day long The strange thing is it hasn't slowed or locked the compuer at all Most days I only use it for short periods and most days if I keep it loaded it slows and locks things up. It seem it is stable if using it all the while but gives problems when resting. I just wish something could be done to make it stable all the time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul Posted November 28, 2009 Author Report Share Posted November 28, 2009 I have recently needed to copy large amounts of data to the clipboard - controlled by ClipMate - (30,000 rows or more of SQL query output). If MEP is running, the clipboard operation is incredibly slow - perhaps taking up to 5 minutes or more to complete the operation, making everything very sluggish (though not in the same way as described in my first post of this topic). And the copy back to, say, UltraEdit is equally molasses-like. If I terminate MEP, then the copies in either direction are pretty well instantaneous. I'm betting that this entire thread is about a problem that is, in some way, related to MEP and its relationship with the clipboard. I do wish we'd get some sort of response from Insight on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terrypin Posted November 28, 2009 Report Share Posted November 28, 2009 [quoteExcel clipboard error possibly linked.I have recently needed to copy large amounts of data to the clipboard - controlled by ClipMate - (30,000 rows or more of SQL query output). If MEP is running, the clipboard operation is incredibly slow - perhaps taking up to 5 minutes or more to complete the operation, making everything very sluggish (though not in the same way as described in my first post of this topic). And the copy back to, say, UltraEdit is equally molasses-like. If I terminate MEP, then the copies in either direction are pretty well instantaneous. I'm betting that this entire thread is about a problem that is, in some way, related to MEP and its relationship with the clipboard. I do wish we'd get some sort of response from Insight on this. I haven't seen such extreme slow-down but have had similar behaviour on a smaller scale which reinforces your assumption. Have you formally raised this to ISS as a potential bug? -- Terry, East Grinstead, UK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yehnfikm8Gq Posted November 29, 2009 Report Share Posted November 29, 2009 Commenting on Directory Opus, I have it running most of the time and have never had conflicts with ME3 or MEP. Have you checked your keyboard for sticky keys, especially the Ctrl, Alt etc that go with every hotkey combo and also get the greatest usage outside of ME eg Ctrl+C? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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