michaelkenward

We have been down this road before. Enough of us have seen the symptoms you described, and have awoken their PCs by closing MacExp, to suggest very strongly that MacExp is very strongly implicated in the behaviour. Other people may see slowdowns caused by other software. If closing MacExp doesn't help, then they should look elsewhere. In the meantime, I report that it happened to me today. Treacle in the works. Close MacExp. Sanity restored. The only consolation is that for me at least it happens slightly less often than it used to.

Coral IE Tab works here. http://coralietab.mozdev.org/ What problems are there with Outlook 2007? Might be worth reporting. It hasn't been abandoned yet.

Confirmed. Change to rich text editor and cursor goes AWOL. Firefox 3.6 certainly killed a lot of extensions. But some are easily fixed by telling the extension to lie about the version number. And after a few days they fixed some others. I also found that there were better alternatives to some of the extensions that broke in 3.6. The ones that died completely were obviously pretty old and had joined the ranks of abandonware. Eventually there comes a time when you have to move on. Then again, I can't see much change in Firefox 3.6. But I am no expert.

The symptoms you describe are not those that people have discussed in this section. What I see, and most other people I assume, is mostly normal behaviour in MEP with suddenly unexplained and unpredictable events that are nearer to a freeze than a slowdown. MEP starts and works just fine for quite some time, days even, before we see, or saw, the onset of lethargy. I mention this because you may have a different issue that might be better pursued in its own right.

I don't know about anyone else, but the phenomenon seems to have abated. I haven't had to force MEP to close for a while. I suggest trying the newest version. No one is going to put any effort into helping someone to solve problems in defunct versions.

Makes immense sense. Nice to have an update feature, but the challenge of creating a macro to check for updates on startup appeals to me. Then again it is probably far beyond my skills. On the slowdowns, Chris Thornton of Clipmate suggests turning off "Use the Clipboard Hook" in Macro Express. I'm reluctant. Might lose something important that I need. Given that the new version that doesn't really exist has some work on the clipboard interaction, maybe it has sorted out the problem. I haven't see a freeze since installing it, but freezes are not that common anyway.

That's how it usually works. Put it on a server, then when the program starts it will check to see if there is an update. DOpus handles it just fine. So does Clipmate. Both, I suspect, have similar sized audiences. Thinking about it, Macro Express is just about the only commercial software I use that lacks this feature in some form or other. Email is fine, and with a short delay. DOpus does likewise to give people time to smoke out any last minute bugs. An RSS feed is another option that some people use.

I didn't know there was 4.1.1.1. Macro Express is rare in not offering some form of aurtomated update check that I can find. Always has to be manual. Perhaps I am supposed to write a macro.

Interesting. We went through another bout of trying to find a common feature between those of us who have seen this slow down. We pretty well ruled out DOpus because quite a few users of that and Macro Express see no problems. I also use Clipmate. Anyone else who sees the slowdown? The multiple copies issue in Clipmate is something that I have seen, but not recently. The guy who developes Clipmate, Chris Thornton, is very responsive to user feedback. But the thought that it might be a general clipboard might rqruie a wider trawl. But if IIS is on the case, maybe we can all just wait to see what they discover. This is the first note I recall seeing that they were even investigating the issue.

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.

Interesting detective work. What puzzles me in this saga is that Task Manager shows no sign of outrageous behaviour by Macexp. The widget you used seems to find other causes for concern. The worrying thing really is that there have been so many reports of this, and the discussion has gone on for so long, that you would have thought that an "official response" might have surfaced by now. Instead, it is left to stalwarts like you to keep plugging away in a search for a pattern.

I use Sophos. Not Kaspersky. Slow episodes still happen.

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.

Bad assumption. Try this: TASKKILL /IM /Macexp.exe /F

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!

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. 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.

The only thing I have in common with that list is Directory Opus. And I am on Vista.

I wonder if it is related to a particular piece of software. It would be hard to eliminate everything, though, which is why I asked about logs to consult.

Is there any way we can log this behaviour and provide debugging feedback? I find it odd that the phenomenon clobbers people with, I suspect, very different pstterns for using Macexp.

Maybe it is a Sussex thing. This behaviour has been a regular feature here to the west of the county. PC slows to crawl. Start task manager. Kill Macexp (Pro 4.1.0.1) -- not supposed to be doing anything, CPU shows no signs of stress. PC Comes back to life. Just wanted to add to the count.

I am afraid I am not sure what to make of this "boilerplate" response. Is it advising me to try again with a bug report? No matter, I have now worked my way through my macros, disabling them a batch at a time. Unfortunately, this has not proved anything. The crash still happens even though I have disabled every saved macro. The problem does not appear to be related to any particular macro.

I use a whole raft of shortkeys for expansions, turning abbreviations into the full version. So DECC turns into Department of Energy and Climate Change. (It is a good way of remembering complicated sets of initials that organisations love to make up for themselves.) So that I can also use DECC and DEC (anyone remenber them?) for different things, I use a combination of start and end keys. So the # symbol triggers the macro. (I never need to type that symbol on its own.) And each abbreviation has a trailing '\' which completes the shortkey. So "#DECC\" is a macroc that expands DECC\. I think I picked up the idea of the trailing "\" somewhere here.

Thanks. The robot acknowledged receipt of my question as week or so ago but has yet to offer an answer. I was hoping for some advice here along the lines of "Look at this log to see what might have happened". No luck. I guess I should just go through my macros sidabling batches of them to see which might be interfering with OmniPage.

Trying to sort out another problem, I thought I would "Repair" MacroExpress Pro. That facility seems to be missing. The text implies it is there, but I cannot find it. Here's what I see: "Select Repair" it says. Er, where is it?

If I have Macro Express Pro running, I cannot launch OmniPage Professional 17. The splash screen appears then after a while I get "OmniPage Application has stopped working". Turn off Macro Express Pro and OmniPage starts just fine. Run OmniPage, turn on Macro Express Pro and OmniPage gives the same error. I have filed a bug report and await the response with interest. In the meantime, is there anywhere that I should look for clues to this? I have removed, repaired, reinstalled and generally frigged around with OmniPage as much as possible with no effect. This behaviour started happening recently. As I have only just added the latest version of Macro Express Pro I wonder if this could be implicated. While I can find earlier versions of Macro Express, it seems that v 4.0 is not in this scheme, so I cannot backtrack, unless someone can point me at an earlier version. I hope this hasn't come up before, I've looked but find nothing relevant.