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QAP frozes when network drives are offline

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• QAP frozes when network drives are offline

• QAP frozes when network drives are offline

  QAPuseru8921 > 2020-09-29 06:14

  The QAP version?
  v10.5.6
  
  Was it installed using the Setup program or the Portable zip file? 
  Setup - .exe
  
  What is your default file manager (if not Windows Explorer)? Windows Explorer
  
  What is your Windows version?
  Windows 10 Pro
  Version: 2004
  Build: 19041.508
  
  My PC: Dell XPS 17 - 2020 - with a 4K internal display and 1440p UWS external display
  
  My QAP is very unreliable and frozes often, both when changing some settings or just when using it normally. 
  The QAP will sometimes not popup when hitting the middlebutton on the mouse. 
  It runs best when only using an external screen (Don't know if that is relevant) 
  (Svarer ikke = Not responding (Dansih))
  
  QAP is one of my favorite types of software, and i really hope to get it to run more reliable. I really like it! Thanks!

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  Jean Lalonde > 2020-09-29 06:59

  Hi,
  
  Thanks for your good words.
  
  I'm sorry about that. It is hard to tell what would be interfering with QAP on your system. Is it only on this system? Since you began using QAP on this system?
  
  Jean

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  QAPuseru8921 > 2020-09-29 07:23

  Hi,
  Thanks for your reply!
  
  This is the first system i am using QAP on.
  
  I am also experiencing the clipboard to not show anything. It just says "No Path or URL in clipboard".. Can it be related?
  

  ---

  Sometimes QAP frozes, and then restarts the application..

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  joeNOR > 2020-09-29 07:53

  I run QAP on several systems with Windows 10 2004, with no problem, it got to be something "external" that messes with QAP.
  
  Depending on how much troubleshooting you are willing to do, here are some pointers that hopefully may help you  
  
  Questions:
  Do you use antivirus other than Windows Defender included with Windows?
  
  Do you have any keyboard shortcut software, clipboard managers etc running other than may interfere with QAP, either installed as part of the Dell standard image or installed separatly?
  
  Do you use any firewall software other than the Windows standard?
  (And do you have files, folders shortcuts on network drives??
  
  Basic troubleshooting:
  Switch off icon retrieval, Customize --> Options --> Menu Icons, remove check mark in front of "Retrieve icons when refreshing...."
  
  Switch off the database, Customize --> Options --> Database, remove check mark in front of "Enable Quick Access Popup Database", and restart QAP.
  
  Start Task Manager (Oppgavebehandling på norsk, vet ikke hva den heter på dansk... quick key CTRL-SHIFT-ESC). Switch to the Details-tab (Detaljer?) and click on the CPU-column.
  When QAP hangs (Svarer ikke) does QAP or any other process use a lot of CPU? (like 80-90-100%)?
  
  There are several things to try, but I'll save them for Round 2 (because it is more work to try out).
  
  Good Luck!
  
  Regards,
  JoeNOR
  

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  QAPuseru8921 > 2020-09-29 08:18

  Thank you very much JoeNOR. (Nice that you are from Norway, i have family there - great country and nature )
  
  i also read this post: https://forum.quickaccesspopup.com/showt...p?tid=1165
  I am connected to two external drives (a server) and i think they are causing the problem. I have removed the "QAP Feature: Drives" and know it runs smothly again.
  When i enable "Drives" again it behaves unreliable.
  
  Is this because it tries to get some information from the server?

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  Jean Lalonde > 2020-09-29 08:23

  Hi,
  
  > I am connected to two external drives (a server) and i think they are causing the problem. I have removed the "QAP Feature: Drives" and know it runs smothly again.
  When i enable "Drives" again it behaves unreliable.
  
  Interesting. Are these server drives online or offline when it hangs QAP?
  
  Jean

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  QAPuseru8921 > 2020-09-29 08:28

  Offline.
  And maybe it also happens when i have not been accessing the drives for a longer period.
  
  Thanks.

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  joeNOR > 2020-09-29 08:32

  Happy to help! (Denmark is also a very nice place to be, you got the best sandwiches in the known universe....  ....and the Mikkeller Brewery)
  Ok, so have you switched of the database and icon refresh as described in the post you link to?
  
  If you then add Drives, to you still have problems, or is it only the Drives item that causes problems no matter if the DB and icon refresh settings are enabled or not?
  
  Is it a Windows server where the drives are connected/mapped through File Explorer (or with "net use" from the command line)?
  
  -Joe
  

  ---

  One of my management PCs runs QAP, and I sometimes connect to the drives of eight other Windows machines.
  The Drives-function seems to work just fine so far, but this is Windows Servers running standard file sharing through SMB (Windows file share mechanism), and I don't use the Frequent Items-thingy so the DB is switched off....

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  QAPuseru8921 > 2020-09-29 08:55

  
  
  Yes, however without any improvements.
  As soon as i remove "drives" from the QAP-menu, it runs smoothly.

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  joeNOR > 2020-09-29 09:00

  What kind of server is this, plain Windows, some sort of NAS or something else?

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  Jean Lalonde > 2020-09-29 09:02

  > Offline.
  
  Good to know. There was a known issue when QAP is building its Frequent menus and trying to retrieve icons from frequent items on offline drives. QAP was hang for about 20 seconds (regardless of the number if items in the Frequent menus). This is is solved and the fix will be in the next release.
  
  But for the Drives QAP feature, there is little I can do. Maybe I should remove it from the default menu created when you launch QAP for the first time.

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  QAPuseru8921 > 2020-09-29 09:09

  Nice! Good work.
  
  If there is others like me and have this issue, maybe it is best to disable it it at first launch.
  
  But Jean.. Do you know what to do with the clipboard? it is not always showing content, and if it does, only one object in the clipboard.

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  Jean Lalonde > 2020-09-29 09:47

  > Do you know what to do with the clipboard? it is not always showing content, and if it does, only one object in the clipboard.
  
  This should answer your question:
  https://www.quickaccesspopup.com/what-is...oard-menu/
  
  If not completely, let me know.
  
  Jean

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  QAPuseru8921 > 2020-09-30 02:05

  Thanks Jean - i must have misunderstood the feature. Thought it was like a "clipboard-storage".
  
  Regarding my issue with the Drives, i can now confirm that the issue is tied to the connection to the drives. I am now connected to the server drives and is not experiencing any issues.
  
  Thanks you very much for developing this software! It is fantastic!
  

  ---

  (2020-09-29 09:00)joeNOR Wrote: What kind of server is this, plain Windows, some sort of NAS or something else?

  
  Windows Server.

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  joeNOR > 2020-09-30 03:19

  Thanks very much for the update.
  
  Did a quick test and was able to reproduce your problem.
  I suspect that this is not a QAP-problem, but a timeout in the OS when trying to "enumerate" network drives that are mapped in the client OS, but offline (server down or unavailable).
  
  Kind of speculating here, but it could probably be somewhat mitigated in QAP with a short timeout in the "Drive-listing" function.
  
  Regards,
  joeNOR

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  joeNOR > 2020-09-30 05:39

  I did some quick digging, and seems to be the 20 sec delay (discussed in another thread) that gets triggered almost all the time in the "Drives"-function
  
  The first arrow, "CloseFile", is the last operation by QAP in a successful attempt at connecting to a network drive that is online.
  Then basically nothing happens while QAP waits (Not Responding / Svarer ikke) for the OS to answer (a network drive that is offline).
  
  After around 20 sec (it varies slightly) the LanmanRedirector responds with "BAD NETWORK PATH".
  This loop gets triggered almost all the time by the Drives function?
  
  I am not a developer (did some Assembler and Ansi C stuff many, many, many years ago).
  But, I would hazard a guess that this could be fixed in the QAP code, ie change the handling of network drives.
  
  Disclaimer: Didn't dig deep into this, so take my claims above with a grain of salt....
  
  Regards,
  joeNOR

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  Jean Lalonde > 2020-09-30 08:47

  > I did some quick digging, and seems to be the 20 sec delay (discussed in another thread) that gets triggered almost all the time in the "Drives"-function
  
  A user pointed out that that this issue can only happen when a network drive is used with a drive letter (e.g. "N:\..."). If the network contents are called using an UNC path ("\\server\path\..."), it would not impact the Drives menu refresh time. This could be an alternative for QAPuseru8921, if feasible.
  
  > The first arrow, "CloseFile", is the last operation by QAP in a successful attempt at connecting to a network drive that is online. Then basically nothing happens while QAP waits (Not Responding / Svarer ikke) for the OS to answer (a network drive that is offline). After around 20 sec (it varies slightly) the LanmanRedirector responds with "BAD NETWORK PATH". This loop gets triggered almost all the time by the Drives function?
  
  Interesting. What tool did you use to produce this report?
  
  > I am not a developer (did some Assembler and Ansi C stuff many, many, many years ago). But, I would hazard a guess that this could be fixed in the QAP code, ie change the handling of network drives.
  
  Unfortunately, the command QAP uses to build the Drives menu is not enough low-level to handle this situation. This would require lower level coding that I'm not sure can be done using AHK (the development tool used to build QAP).
  
  Thanks for this informative post.
  
  Jean

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  joeNOR > 2020-09-30 09:20

  I haven't tested with UNC only, because I always map network drives to a letter (lots of applications gets confused or "angry" if I use UNC)....
  
  The tool used is Sysinternals Process Monitor, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...ds/procmon
  I've been using Sysinternals tools (paid version) for a very long time, way before Mark Russinovich started at Microsoft and the tools became freeware.

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  Jean Lalonde > 2020-09-30 09:51

  > A user pointed out that that this issue can only happen when a network drive is used with a drive letter (e.g. "N:\..."). If the network contents are called using an UNC path ("\\server\path\..."), it would not impact the Drives menu refresh time. This could be an alternative for QAPuseru8921, if feasible.
  
  What I meant here was only related to the "Drives" QAP command. Having other favorites trying to open a \\server\path\... location on a offline server would still cause a delay.

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  joeNOR > 2020-09-30 10:09

  Thanks for the clarification, interesting, maybe the developers of AHK can implement something similar for mapped drives....if we ask nicely!

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  QAPuseru8921 > 2020-10-01 01:40

  Another update!
  Thanks for the work you guys have been doing.
  
  The problem is also appearing when a file path with the server drives is in the recent folder or recent files.. 
  
  is it possible to exclude locations for QAP, so it doesn't try to see the drives?
  
  For the filepaths, please see the attached.

• RE: QAP frozes often..

  joeNOR > 2020-10-01 02:24

  As far as I know, the Recent Items in QAP uses the Windows function for this.
  Haven't checked, but maybe it is possible to block this (in Windows) for network drives through a registry hack, or GPO?
  
  Btw, (for new readers ), this is not a QAP "problem" as such.
  The timeout that happens when network drives goes missing is expected behaviour from the operating system (LanmanRedirector "BAD NETWORK PATH").
  You'll see similar timeouts in File Explorer or if you use the "dir" command on network drives that have gone offline.
  (Windows flags the drive as down/unavailable)
  
  It could probably be argued that the AHK function that Jean linked to in another post, could be made more resilient and/or configurable to handle error situations.
  Or, at least, be made multi-threaded to avoid blocking the whole application when a timeout occurs.
  
  Regards,
  joeNOR

• RE: QAP frozes when network drives are offline

  Jean Lalonde > 2020-10-01 09:06

  Hi,
  
  > Btw, (for new readers :-) ), this is not a QAP "problem" as such.
  
  Yes, it is good to keep this in mind. However, if we can find ways to mitigate this problem, I'll be happy to implement it. BTW, for those seeing the title of this thread of of context, I replaced the word "often" in the title to "when network drives are offline".
  
  > The problem is also appearing when a file path with the server drives is in the recent folder or recent files..
  > is it possible to exclude locations for QAP, so it doesn't try to see the drives?
  
  This is the first time I hear this. The issue is seen in the Frequent menus because files or folders there being older (coming from the QAP database), there are more chances that their location become offline.
  
  > Haven't checked, but maybe it is possible to block this (in Windows) for network drives through a registry hack, or GPO?
  
  Never seen it. If someone finds something, let me know. About GPOs, I'm not sure if an application can change them.
  
  Thanks,
  Jean

• RE: QAP frozes when network drives are offline

  joeNOR > 2020-10-01 09:19

  Sorry, I was a bit unclear on the registry and GPO part.
  
  Both are system settings, ie they affect the entire system and such has nothing to do with QAP (imho).
  
  GPO's are typically only available out of the box in the Pro and Enterprise versions of Windows 10 (gpedit, the Local Group Policy Editor) or if the computer is a member of an Active Directory domain. I don't think gpedit is included with the Home version?
  
  And no, they should not be messed with by an application, if it is even possible/allowed in Windows.

• RE: QAP frozes when network drives are offline

  Jean Lalonde > 2020-10-01 09:34

  Thanks for the clarification. However, registry keys *can* be changed by QAP.
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