Opening slow for one client

[Stacey McDonald]

All my clients are on FileMaker 6 and the server is FileMaker 5. I have approximately 25 clients accessing a multi database solution. When one of the clients opens a particular database it takes it 45 minutes to open and the rest of the databases open fine. All of the other clients have no problems opening this or other databases. This problem has progressively gotten worse. Started out taking 20 minutes and is now up to 50 minutes. I suggested he move computer to another LAN connection and he still has the same problem. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Stacey McDonald

[-Queue-]

Try deleting the user's temp files first. FM doesn't clean up very well after itself when it crashes.

[Barbecue]

This might also be caused by a duplicate copy of the problem file somewhere on the network or local drive.

[Stacey McDonald]

When you say temp files, do you mean C:WINNTTEMP??

Thanks for your help!

Stacey

[transpower]

Check your environmental variables for TEMP or TMP--these will give you the path.

[Stacey McDonald]

Thanks everyone for your input. None of the options recommended worked. Please advise if anyone has any other suggestions.

Thanks,

Stacey

[DykstrL]

Try this:

Before opening FMP, change the default printer in the system settings - preferrably to an inkjet printer or PDF writer. Then open the offending file. If it opens OK then, you have a corrupt printer driver for the old default printer. That can have an adverse impact on FileMaker.

FileMaker uses the printer driver to paint the screen. On MACs it uses the printer definition - they don't seem to have problems with this kind of corruption, but Windoze machines do - I see it a lot.

[Barbecue]

Is the file in question being manually opened directly from the HOSTS dialog, or is it being automatically opened by another file?

Is it the particular computer, or the particular user that has this problem?

If it's the user, then this could be related to some sort of weird authentication problem (unlikely though).

You're listed as using FM7 on Windows 2000. Is that the configuration of the computer you're having trouble with?

Besides the slow loading, what else is different about this computer versus others that don't have the problem? Does it have special software others don't use? Is it a different brand? Different OS version or patch level?

This could even be caused by defective hardware, such as bad ram or a hard drive error. Might be worth running one of those diagnostic utilities on the machine.

Some things to check

[*]Double-Check the temp files. Maybe do a search for *.tmp on the local drive.

[*]Make sure the computer in question has plenty of RAM and lots of free hard drive space.

[*]While the file is opening, is the "Opening FILENAME as a guest of SERVER" message showing the same server name or address as the other machines?

[*]Check the error log on the FM Server to see if there are any errors at the time the problem occurs

[*]Start the problem workstation in safe mode with network support, see if the problem goes away.

[*]Uninstall and then reinstall the FileMaker application

[*]Make sure the workstation has the exact same network configuration as another known good one.

[*]Check ALL of the workstations to be sure none of them have files with the same name as any of the files on the server

[*]If all else fails you can R&R the workstation. That will fix anything but a hardware problem.