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The TB editor still freezes for 40 seconds each time it gets the focus :-(
 
#1
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I posted this issue several years ago but it still has not been resolved.  I am using TB v10 but this has also been an issue for several previous  TB versions.  It's also persisted though several different new computer rebuilds.  I'm currently using Win10-64bit on an Intel i7 12th gen system with 32GB DDR5 RAM and a 2TB Samsung SSD.

I've contacted support but they can't duplicate it.  The problem occurs only when the TB editor window is open.  Whenever I give the focus to the window of another application, then click back onto the TB main window or the TB editor window, it takes 40 seconds or more for TB to respond.  It then works fine until I change the focus again, at which time it takes 40 seconds again for TB to come back to life. I've looked at the stats in the Task Manager but nothing is coming close to hogging any of the resources.  I've also checked the box "Run CEF Browser in a single process..." at the recommendation of TB support but that doesn't help.  It doesn't matter which of HTML, RTF, or Plain Text is selected.

I have run many different editors, email clients, and other applications over the years on many different computers and only TB has this problem.  Luckily, when TB ties itself in a knot this way it doesn't affect any other applications I'm running.  I'd switch to a different email client in an instant if there were any others that have the TB features I need.  But there are none so I've just had to repeatedly put up with the 40 second or more delay.  Eudora came the closest but it's long gone and its supposed replacement falls far short.

I have no idea how to debug this issue so any suggestions would be welcome.  A recommendation of a less-buggy but full-featured email client would also be appreciated.

Thank you,
Ray
 
 
 
#2
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Ray Mitchell wrote:
Whenever I give the focus to the window of another application, then click back onto the TB main window or the TB editor window, it takes 40 seconds or more for TB to respond.  It then works fine until I change the focus again, at which time it takes 40 seconds again for TB to come back to life.

Did you ever try my earlier suggestion of disconnecting all external drives and network drives, re-launch The Bat and see if it still happens? It that doesn't help, do you have any folders on your local HDD that contains many thousands of subfolders?

Long delays like this are often caused by a process trying to read from a sleeping drive, a slow network drive, an exceptionally large folder -- or any of those in combination with antivirus software that interferes with the reading.

Another common cause is a process that tries to access a resource on the internet but it doesn't work -- For instance, it makes 5 attempts and for each one, the server takes 8 seconds to produce an error message or time-out.

If the above produces no results, I'd reboot Windows into Safe Mode (without networking) and see if the delays still happen. If that does the trick, some other process or driver was the cause and you have to repeatedly deactivate startup programs and reboot until you've found the culprit.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#3
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There is a fix in the latest v11.1: "Remove possible delays on editor startup due to overcrowded system’s recent documents folder"

You could try v11.1 to see if fixes the problem and/or reduce the number of files in the recent documents folder:
c:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent­
Edited: Miloš Radovanović - 06 April 2024 22:31:01
 
 
 
#4
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Daniel van Rooijen wrote:
Did you ever try my earlier suggestion of disconnecting all external drives and network drives, re-launch The Bat and see if it still happens? It that doesn't help, do you have any folders on your local HDD that contains many thousands of subfolders?
Daniel,

I did try disconnecting my one external drive and that didn't help.  I don't have any network drives per se, but there are some other devices on my LAN that I turned off and that didn't help either. Regarding your additional new suggestions, I don't have any extremely large folders either.  In addition, I tried Milos's suggestion of removing all the files from recent documents folder but it made no difference.  I then tried removing all email files from my TB account mailboxes but that didn't help either.

I haven't tried the safe mode boot and nitpicking the various drivers yet because I've found what I think is a less painful workaround as long as it continues to work.  When I disable my ethernet adaptor TB returns to normal.  There's no delay when initially opening the editor window or when switching back and forth between it and the windows of other applications.  As soon as I reenable the adaptor, it's back to the usual 40 second delays.

Because of this discovery I wrote a little C# application that will quickly either enable or disable the adaptor by just double clicking the appropriate desktop icon.  I now merely disable the adaptor when I want to create or respond to an email, then reenable it when I want to send the email.  Luckily, very seldom do I need to use the internet for something else when editing with TB, but I'm sure other TB users probably do.

I know it's not a bad adaptor because this problem has persisted through several different computer builds.  The only things common to all the builds are the two display adapters for my six monitors.  I suppose it could somehow be related to them and I'll try a different display adaptor with a single monitor when I get a chance, but I don't see why the ethernet adaptor would be involved in that case.  If TB is somehow accessing the internet because the editor window is opening or regaining the focus, it doesn't make sense to me why this would be necessary, but what do I know :-(

Anyway, that's all for now and thanks for your suggestions.
 
 
 
#5
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Ray Mitchell wrote:
I haven't tried the safe mode boot and nitpicking the various drivers yet because I've found what I think is a less painful workaround as long as it continues to work.  When I disable my ethernet adaptor TB returns to normal.

Good! I didn't want to suggest that you disable internet access because it is required to send and receive mail, but running TB in Safe Mode w/o Networking would likely also have removed the delays.  I don't think there's anything wrong with any adaptor. The cause is probably what I wrote above: "Another common cause is a process that tries to access a resource on the internet but it doesn't work". When a program or part of it comes to the foreground, like TB's editor does, that's an event that may trigger anti-malware (or spyware..), so that's the first thing that I'd be looking at.

There's a free small utility 'CurrPorts' (CPorts for short) by NirSoft that lets you easily monitor all TCP connections. If so inclined, you can read about and download it here:

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.html  

If you try Cports, I'd expect it to show you that a new TCP connection opens when you launch the message editor. The destination address may give you a hint as to who or what is doing it (e.g. it might be a Microsoft server or an Avast server).
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#6
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Daniel van Rooijen wrote:
If you try Cports, I'd expect it to show you that a new TCP connection opens when you launch the message editor. The destination address may give you a hint as to who or what is doing it (e.g. it might be a Microsoft server or an Avast server).
Daniel,

I tried Cports and it's a pretty cool application. There seem to be various connections that open and close just with the computer idling after it settles down from a fresh restart, but I assume you are referring to those associated with the TheBat64.exe process.  When TB is first started there are only two such processes and it stays that way until I open the editor window.  One is on local port 40000 and the other is on local port 40001.  The local and remote addresses are 0.0.0.0 for 40000 and is not shown for 40001.

When I first open the editor window two additional TheBat64.exe processes sometimes, but not always appear.  Whether they appear or not doesn't seem to have any correlation with whether or not I'm going to have to wait for 40 seconds or whether the editor window will open instantly, which it sometimes does.  The same IP address was associated with both new processes and when I did a WHOIS search on them, it lists a company named "Markmonitor", which seems to specialize in domain management according to their website.

I'm obviously not an expert on this low-level TCP/IP protocol stuff so I'm not sure if I should be also looking at some of the other processes.  Looking to the future, although turning my network adapter off an on to use TB does work, it's still a nuisance.  Because I use very few of the fancy features of TB, I'm thinking I may be able to write a custom email client that just does the basic things I need.  But of course even that will take some doing and I don't know when/if I'll actually get around to it.  I have written several low-level embedded email applications using pre-packaged email libraries so it's primarily the GUI that I think will take some time to write.

Ray
 
 
 
#7
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Are you using an IMAP server? If so, maybe changing some option in Account Properties could help. Something like:

- Transport -> Use SMTP servers On-The-Go
- Mail Management -> IMAP Fine-Tune: something related to the IDLE command
- etc.
 
 
 
#8
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Ray Mitchell wrote:
There seem to be various connections that open and close just with the computer idling after it settles down from a fresh restart, but I assume you are referring to those associated with the TheBat64.exe process.

I'm not sure if it will be associated with The Bat.. personally I'd look at any connections that open when you bring the editor window to the foreground and the freeze occurs.

I'd try not to use any other programs that use the internet (in particular no browser), or you'll get lots of distracting entries in the list of connections. In the CPorts 'Options' menu, you could turn off IPv6 and UDP connections to further reduce the number of entries (I don't think those two would be relevant, but I may be mistaken - I'm far from an expert either).  

Quote
The same IP address was associated with both new processes and when I did a WHOIS search on them, it lists a company named "Markmonitor", which seems to specialize in domain management according to their website.

Strange that that comes up when you invoke the editor. It would be interesting if it also comes up (and no other connections do) when a delay is triggered. Do you see any process in Windows' Task Monitor that might be involved?
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#9
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Daniel van Rooijen wrote:
Strange that that comes up when you invoke the editor. It would be interesting if it also comes up (and no other connections do) when a delay is triggered. Do you see any process in Windows' Task Monitor that might be involved?
The meanings of many of the processes Task Manager displays strike me about the same way as many of the things Cport displays.  There are so many of them that are constantly changing that it's difficult to tell which is which and what they do.  I've looked at Task Manger many times over the years I've been fighting with the many problems TB sometimes exhibits and I often use it to kill TB when it decides to leave one of its background tasks running, which is quite often.

Regarding the "Markmonitor" IP addresses TB often accesses when the editor window opens, I've been adding them to my "block" list in the Windows firewall as I see them.  The problem is that that company must have a lot of different such addresses because as I block them, different ones appear.  I see no reason why opening the TB editor should access anything on the Internet until the "Send" button is clicked.  I think TB must be "phoning home" for something.  I'll contact TB support and see if they are intentionally accessing the Internet when the editor window opens.

I also discovered another strange IP address associated with the editor window.  I only saw it once but I haven't spent a lot of time playing this game.  That IP address is 46.30.46.21.  WHOIS said it couldn't find any entries for it but in the process apparently was looking at some Russian servers.  That's not very comforting.  Below is the message I got from WHOIS.  Maybe it will mean more to you:

****************************************************

WhoIs>whois 46.30.46.21

Whois v1.21 - Domain information lookup
Copyright © 2005-2019 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

Connecting to RU.whois-servers.net...

% TCI Whois Service. Terms of use:
% https://tcinet.ru/documents/whois_ru_rf.pdf (in Russian)
% https://tcinet.ru/documents/whois_su.pdf (in Russian)

No entries found for the selected source(s).

Last updated on 2024-04-08T20:16:31Z

Connecting to rvice. Terms of use:...
No such host is known.

****************************************************
 
 
 
#10
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Ray Mitchell wrote:
I also discovered another strange IP address associated with the editor window.  I only saw it once but I haven't spent a lot of time playing this game.  That IP address is 46.30.46.21.  WHOIS said it couldn't find any entries for it but in the process apparently was looking at some Russian servers.  That's not very comforting.  Below is the message I got from WHOIS.  Maybe it will mean more to you:

That IP took my browser to http://vz165256.eurodir.ru, which is just an empty page. But googling that URL in quotes suggests a connection with AntiSpamSniper. Are you using that plugin?
 
 
 
#11
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Miloš Radovanović wrote:
That IP took my browser to  http://vz165256.eurodir.ru , which is just an empty page. But googling that URL in quotes suggests a connection with AntiSpamSniper. Are you using that plugin?
Miloš,
Yes, I am using AntiSpamSniper.  I thought that might be it but I couldn't find any information on the IP address.  I thought AntiSpamSniper was in Moldova since it integrates so closely with TB.  However, when I asked Chat GPT where it was, it said it was in the U.S.  Either way, it seems strange that a Russian URL is involved.
Ray
 
 
 
#12
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Ray Mitchell wrote:
Yes, I am using AntiSpamSniper.
Does the problem go away when you disable it?

I've never used it, maybe there are some options you can configure.
 
 
 
#13
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I'm have such behaviour on the colleague PC few days ago with v10-5-3-2 (I do fear to install v11 there :) )

What I have done and problem was gone:
do installation of v10-5-4, restart PC, marks few unread messages as read (they freeze TB if I try to answer on them). Yep, mystic "old unread messages" do TB as a sloth animal.
Модератор. Не являюсь сотрудником RitLabs (I'm not an employee of Ritlabs). https://belrus.biz/vendors/ritlabs.html
 
 
 
#14
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Miloš Radovanović wrote:
Quote
Ray Mitchell wrote:
Yes, I am using AntiSpamSniper.
Does the problem go away when you disable it?

I'd be curious to know too, at this point it does sound like the most plausible explanation (though I'm not sure why AntiSpamSniper should be activated when the editor is brought to the foreground). The next question would be what the specific cause of the delays is.
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#15
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I have the same  about 40 sec delay with newer versions.  I tried several new versions , but finally reinstall 10.3.3.3.    there is no delay with this version.
I am afraid to install any new version yet.
 
 
 
#16
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Peter Csuri wrote:
I have the same  about 40 sec delay with newer versions.  I tried several new versions , but finally reinstall 10.3.3.3.    there is no delay with this version.

Ray had this problem for many years, so, for him at least it was not tied to any particular recent version. Unfortunately he has not yet reported back to let us know if the problem was solved. Have you tried all suggestions that were made in this topic - in particular, have you disabled any old plugins that you may have under Options | Preferences | Plugins | .. , and have you tried if launching Windows in Safe Mode makes a difference?
I volunteer as a moderator to help keep the forum tidy. I do not work for Ritlabs SRL.
 
 
 
#17
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And ask support about all of this. We can't beat shaman drum with you, it not helps.  

But support won't helps you with an old release. As far as I understand you don't try 10-5-4 version as I suggested, and you don't try last v11 as Miloš says.

Yep, politic of RitLabs is heartless to users who's don't pay for a new versions. All fixed bugs fixed only with the current version.
Модератор. Не являюсь сотрудником RitLabs (I'm not an employee of Ritlabs). https://belrus.biz/vendors/ritlabs.html
 
 
 
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