Notepad++ VERY slow to open

Jeff Esposito

Since I have gotten my new computer Notepad++ takes 40-50 seconds to launch. I have removed all plugins and don’t check recent file history at launch is checked.
There are no open unsaved tabs, even though that is how I want to use it and use it on my old pc and my work laptop. the install directory is also on my SSD C drive. I’ve tried fresh installs and just updated to the latest version this morning. Nothing seems to help.

I do open files on my NAS, but I can navigate to the NAS in explorer, open a file, edit it, save it and close it all while still waiting for notepad++ to open.

Any other ideas on what I can try?

mylittleplaceholder

@Jeff-Esposito Do you have any threat protection antimalware software running? I haven’t seen it specifically with Notepad++, but have seen apps sometimes take longer to start if it has to check signatures and fingerprints for all of the libraries and executables.

Jeff Esposito

@mylittleplaceholder I do have bitdefender running, but I also had it running on my last machine. I have disabled all of bitdefender, following the Bitdefender page How do I temporarily disable Bitdefender in Windows? I still see the same response.

Ekopalypse

@Jeff-Esposito

If you want to find out what is going on during startup, you can use procmon procmon to track what npp is doing.

Jeff Esposito

@Ekopalypse I’m not sure what I’m looking for. trying to launch notepad++ creates seemingly millions of lines. I’m not sure what any of it means.

most the lines take place in the first second, but then it gets to this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yvn04phz7v6bdun/Screenshot 2022-08-04 100505.png?dl=0

any ideas on what doing this and how to stop it?

Thanks!

Alan Kilborn

@Jeff-Esposito

Why not just Ctrl+v paste your screenshot here?
Not everyone is allowed to see your dropbox version of it.

Ekopalypse

@Jeff-Esposito

At the first moment, of course, all messages are relevant, since we do not know where the problem is.
I would start by looking at the timestamps to see if there is already a delay.
If there are too many messages, just play with the filters
of the different views (the last 5 buttons in the toolbar).
For example, I would not expect registry accesses to cause the delay. Profiling is also unlikely.

Jeff Esposito

@Alan-Kilborn

Jeff Esposito

@Ekopalypse Thanks, I added the screen shot here. It looks like there are about 40 process polling that takes about a second each.

Ekopalypse

@Jeff-Esposito

These are events which are collected every seconds to give you an idea what the current thread is doing in terms of cpu user and kernel time etc…
I assume these are not relevant in your case.
I would go like this.

make sure procmon is not monitoring (ctrl+e stops/starts monitoring)
empty view if it was monitoring (ctrl+x)
define a filter -> Process Name is notepad++.exe (ctrl+l)
activate “show filesystem activity” only

start monitoring (ctrl+e)
start notepad++
stop monitoring, once notepad++ has been started.

Now I would go through the events and try to see if there is a noticeable gap in time that should point to the file/directory that is causing the delay.

Jeff Esposito

@Ekopalypse I beleive that image is unfiltered. Nothing else is happening in those 40ish seconds. I’m not home right now, but will double check when I get home.

Jeff Esposito

@Ekopalypse yes, I’m watching the process profiling appear one after the other every second. everything is selected nothing else is happening, just Process profiling. What is it and why is it doing this?

Thanks for the help!

Jeff Esposito

everything else that happens, is happening in less than a second before that section and less than another second after that.

12:40:02.82 - 12:40:02.86 - Everything before
12:40:03.74 - 12:40:50.75 - Process Profiling section
12:40:50.99 - 12:41:51.43 - Everything else.

After it opens it starts doing the process profiling again. it does more of them.

Jeff Esposito

@Jeff-Esposito ok, is see it now. the process profiling happens every second. it only looks weird here because nothing else is happening because of a hung process.

It is trying to access a path that doesn’t exist, my old NAS. it looks like there is a file named choice in AppData/roaming/cloud that has a single line with the bad path. I just pointed it to the path on my new nas and everything is working fine now.

Thanks for all the help!

Ekopalypse

@Jeff-Esposito said in Notepad++ VERY slow to open:

What is it and why is it doing this?

Glad to hear you figured it out, and sorry for the late reply, but I try to stay away from the computer on weekends.

Windows provides the ability to collect statistics about running processes, and that is what procmon uses. I don’t think profiling information is particularly useful in most cases. The only scenario I can think of is if you are developing a driver that is loaded by the kernel, then you can get the information if it is working fast enough or leaking memory by comparing the collected values.