Debug mode

[David Quail]

Hi Guys,

What are the command line switches to allow AP Beta to output a debug text file? I would like to send this in for analysis, as for the past week AP is starting up like thick molasses. Previously it was always within 10 sec from a cold boot and around 5 secs from a warm boot. I have done a CTRL start and cleaned up everything on the list, but to no avail.

There have been no updates, or any other installations of any kind since the last time it started properly. Last update on Win10 1709 was a Malicious Software Removal (MRTSTUB.EXE) tool on the 10th Jan. Am an MCSE to watch these things like a hawk. And, this is happening on both my main PC and my laptop.

This is driving me nuts, as Photoshop CC, etc., have not been affected.

Thanks in advance!

[Asser82]

Lets hope that these are not the effects of the meltdown patch, which came around that version. If you have an older Intel processor, then you could see IO based slowdown.

[David Quail]

This is possible. But why are only the Affinity apps affected on my computers?

[AlainP]

My Windows system is patched and I can't see any difference in speed. There is probably one but so subtle that it doesn't make any difference in all my apps. 

It has to be something else.

[David Quail]

1 hour ago, AlainP said:

My Windows system is patched and I can't see any difference in speed. There is probably one but so subtle that it doesn't make any difference in all my apps. 

It has to be something else.

What Generation of Intel CPU do you have?

[AlainP]

5 hours ago, Dave Quail said:

What Generation of Intel CPU do you have?

Intel i3-550 3,2 Ghz

[David Quail]

Thanks. So that is the Clarksdale CPU, originally released 2010. Mine is i7 2630QM, released 2011. This thus confuses the issue

 

[AlainP]

I doubt very much that the patch causes this as only your Affinity Photo app is affected. And why would be just the application loading time affected.... I can't say.

[Asser82]

The meltdown patch has strong influences on SSDs. The faster they were, the more impact the patch had. Loading from old school hard drives was nearly not affected, loading from SATA SSDs was affected, loading from M2 SSD was strongly affected, all in realation to the speed before. When a tool like Affinity Photo starts up, it is the timepoint, where it performs the most IO operations. It loads assemblies, it loads fonts etc. Each IO operation needs a context switch into the kernel, where the bottleneck lies after the patch. After everything is in memory and nothing has to be written to disc or sent via network, there is no performance decrease. This is why games run nearly as fast as before (-5%), where all the cloud storage provider cry about >= 30% slowdown. Their servers do almost IO only.

No one knows whether the problem lies in it, but it could be one of the reasons. Maybe Affinity Photo is more IO intense than others, or Dave has a large library of something, which is loaded when Affinity Photo starts up.

[David Quail]

 I will continue to test various scenarios and report back with any positive results

[PaulAffinity]

Hi Dave, not a symptom of the current issue with Malwarebytes is it?

P

[David Quail]

Hi Paul, I only run it on demand...

[David Quail]

Hi all, just some feedback on the start up issue. It is solved. With really nothing else to go on, I removed by the Monitor and Display Adapter in Device Manager, let Windows 10 rediscover the Monitor, and installed the Display Adapter drivers (AMD/ATi) from scratch. Photo Beta now opens in 7-9 secs from a cold start, and 5 secs from a warm start, so back to normal. Befor the monitor and Display adapter re-installation, a warm start was around 45 secs!