Slow macro execution on a laptop... why?

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Jonathan Sachs - 09 Nov 2005 20:30 GMT

While attending school, I used Windows XP and Word 2003 on a Dell
Inspiron 5100 laptop computer which the school provided for my use as
a disability accommodation. (I have carpal tunnel syndrome, and I
operate the computer mostly by speech recognition.) This machine had a
2.6 GHz CPU and 512 MB of RAM. It ran Word macros at an agonizingly
slow pace. I once timed some lengthy macros and found that they ran 8
to 10 times slower on this computer than on a 2.8 GHz tower machine
that I also used.

I never figured out why things ran so slowly on the Dell machine. Here
are some possibilities and observations on them:

* Version of Word: the tower machine ran Word 2000 and the laptop ran
Word 2003. I cannot rule out the possibility that Word 2003 inherently
runs macros 10 times slower than Word 2000, but I think it is
unlikely.

* RAM: the tower machine had 1024 MB of RAM and the laptop had 512 MB.
Several of the people have told me that this was the problem, and saw
no need to look further. However, I cannot reconcile this theory with
the fact that while the machine was running macros so slowly it
typically was not accessing the hard disk much at all. One access
every couple of seconds was typical. Is there a known, specific way
that inadequate RAM can lead to slow performance, other than by
causing overuse of the swap file? I am not aware of one.

* Virus: it seems unlikely to me that the computer was infected by a
virus, because a current copy of Norton AntiVirus was running the
whole time, and it never found problems. Also, I searched Windows Task
Manager many times for a task that was eating up CPU time, and never
found one. Most of the time went to the idle process.

I am now looking for a job in which I will probably have to provide my
own portable computer (most likely a tablet PC) to accommodate my
disability needs. Before I select one I need to figure out what was
wrong with Word on the Dell machine, or least, how to avoid a repeat
of the Dell experience. Does anyone have information about this, or
testable theories?

My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

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Charles Kenyon - 09 Nov 2005 20:47 GMT

See what happens if you turn Norton AV off.

Signature

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/ which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

> While attending school, I used Windows XP and Word 2003 on a Dell
> Inspiron 5100 laptop computer which the school provided for my use as
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
>
> My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

Reply to this Message

Jonathan Sachs - 09 Nov 2005 21:56 GMT

>See what happens if you turn Norton AV off.

Since I don't have the original computer any more, I can't perform
experiments. Would you please refer me to the source of information
that prompted this suggestion? With a little luck, I will be able to
determine whether it is likely to be applicable.

I should note that the tower computer I mentioned was running the same
version of NAV. An interaction between NAV and Word 2003 (but not Word
2000) could explain what was happening.

My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

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Charles Kenyon - 10 Nov 2005 16:14 GMT

The Office Plug-In in Norton AV has been known to cause all sorts of
problems in Word. It may be that it is enabled on the laptop and not on the
tower machine. My source of information is these newsgroups over years. I
can't point you to a web page, I'm just suggesting that you try it.

Signature

>>See what happens if you turn Norton AV off.
>
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

Reply to this Message

Jonathan Sachs - 10 Nov 2005 16:47 GMT

>The Office Plug-In in Norton AV has been known to cause all sorts of
>problems in Word. It may be that it is enabled on the laptop and not on the
>tower machine. My source of information is these newsgroups over years. I
>can't point you to a web page, I'm just suggesting that you try it.

As I said, I cannot try it because I no longer have the original
laptop computer. The Norton help file says that "If you upgrade to
Microsoft Office 2000 or later after Norton AntiVirus is installed,
you must turn on this option," which implies that it would have been
on. My current system has it on (with Windows XP and Office 2000) and
it is causing no problems, but perhaps there is difficulty specific to
Office 2003.

I would like to check the places where you found your information to
see what I can find, but it's unclear to what "these newsgroups"
refers to. I am posting in microsoft.public.word.vba.general. What
other newsgroups should I search?

My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

Reply to this Message

Charles Kenyon - 10 Nov 2005 20:12 GMT

Any micrusoft.public.word newsgroups. You definitely want that plug-in
turned off.

Signature

>>The Office Plug-In in Norton AV has been known to cause all sorts of
>>problems in Word. It may be that it is enabled on the laptop and not on
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
>
> My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

Reply to this Message

Charles Kenyon - 10 Nov 2005 20:17 GMT

Oops. meant microsoft

> Any micrusoft.public.word newsgroups. You definitely want that plug-in
> turned off.
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
>>
>> My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

Reply to this Message

Jonathan Sachs - 12 Nov 2005 03:33 GMT

>Any micrusoft.public.word newsgroups. You definitely want that plug-in
>turned off.

I checked that family of newsgroups with DejaNews, and I am rather
puzzled by what I found. I found a large number of threads in which
the original poster reported that Word was starting slowly, or that it
was opening and/or closing documents slowly. In each case, NAV was
identified as the culprit. But in the first several pages of
references I did not find a single report of Word running macros
slowly.

In the newsgroup microsoft.public.word.application.errors, in a thread
titled "HELP! On File:New, 10 seconds elapse before "New" dialogue
(500 MHz machine)," I found the following in a message posted by Uriel
Wittenberg on February 29, 2000:

>After tracking this problem down to Norton AntiVirus I inquired at
>Symantec tech support to ask why scanning would occur at all when I do
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>accessed. The files are being accessed when they are put in the
>list and again when you open them."

Here Symantec technical support appears to be confirming that virus
checking occurs when a file is opened (and apparently also at earlier
times), but apparently not when macros in the file are executed.

I searched the newsgroups for references to "Norton" or "NAV" with the
phrases "run macros" or "running macros," and found only a handful of
references, none of which concerned this problem. (A typical reference
was "Addon to Word crashes when try to run macros.")

In conclusion, the references to NAV in these newsgroups appear to
concern a problem different from the one I described.

From the evidence I have seen, I cannot say with confidence that NAV
has nothing to do with the problem I described. However, neither can I
find support for a conclusion that it did. At this point, NAV is a
promising hypothesis that requires further investigation. But I have
tried to do that investigation, and have found no support for the
hypothesis.

I need to ask for something more specific than "My source of
information is these newsgroups over years." If there is information
here that points clearly to NAV as the source of the problem I
described, I can't find it.

My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

Reply to this Message

Klaus Linke - 12 Nov 2005 12:14 GMT

Hi Jonathan,

Many macros will cause temporary files to be generated. I wouldn't be
surprised if Norton AntiVirus kicks in each time.

Anyway, Charles made a suggestion, and you won't or can't test it.
Other add-ins might be responsible, too (... for a list of COM Add-Ins, see
the Help menu ("?") > Info > System Info > Office applications > Word).
Or the laptop might have been terribly configured, and running with reduced
CPU speed.
Or it could have lots of other causes.

Since you can't test, it'll probably remain a mystery. All we can do is
confirm that the version difference and the installed memory shouldn't make
that big of a difference, though that can't be 100% excluded either,
depending on the exact macro you were using.

Regards,
Klaus

>>Any micrusoft.public.word newsgroups. You definitely want that plug-in
>>turned off.

> I checked that family of newsgroups with DejaNews, and I am rather
> puzzled by what I found. I found a large number of threads in which
[quoted text clipped - 45 lines]
>
> My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

Reply to this Message

Jonathan Sachs - 12 Nov 2005 14:26 GMT

>Many macros will cause temporary files to be generated. I wouldn't be
>surprised if Norton AntiVirus kicks in each time....
>Other add-ins might be responsible, too ...

Nothing like that was the problem. If it were, I would have identified
it. I spent a great deal of time trying to zero in on specific
operations that were running slowly, and I never found any. (As the
author of the macros, I was entirely qualified to do this.) I had to
conclude that the execution process itself was running slowly,
statement by statement.

>Anyway, Charles made a suggestion, and you won't or can't test it.

"Won't or can't"? I'm sorry, but I can't think of a way to respond to
that courteously. It hasn't been so long since I posted my original
question. Three days, to be exact. Apparently it has already sunk into
the primordial ooze, and my whole explanation of the problem might as
well never have been written.

I appreciate the fact that you are trying to be helpful, but if you
can't be bothered to understand the problem under discussion before
you respond, you might as well not respond at all.

You're correct that since I no longer have access to the computer that
was running slowly, the problem is difficult to resolve, and may
remain a mystery. But since I will soon have to shell out $1500 or so
for a new, similar machine, I think it is entirely reasonable for me
to seek insights that will help me avoid suffering the same problem
again.

I investigated the source Charles claimed for his information, and the
evidence I found suggested that it is not relevant. Being reluctant to
dismiss it as worthless, I asked Charles if he could give me a more
specific reference. Do you think that was unreasonable? I do not.

My email address is LLM041103 at earthlink dot net.

Reply to this Message

Klaus Linke - 12 Nov 2005 15:59 GMT

> "Won't or can't"? I'm sorry, but I can't think of a way to respond to
> that courteously.

Well I had (and have) the same problem with your posts ;-)

Glad we found *some* common ground,
Klaus

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