Long load times

[lucidinterval1]

Hello Yogani,

I experienced pretty long load times yesterday. This is unusual for me and it is a recent thing. Usually access to the AYP forum is pretty instant. As you have mentioned, we don't want a problem like this discouraging people from visiting this site frequently.

If anyone else is having difficulty logging on to this site, let us know. It can certainly help the troubleshooting aspect.

Paul

[yogani]

Thanks for posting this, Paul.

Indeed, long load times have been an issue for some from time to time, and it is important for such incidents to be reported so we can track down the gremlin that is responsible.

The guru is in you.

[Richard]

I have had the occasional time out but only if I go on the forum very late at night here in the UK. I suppose because of the time difference this must be the time of heaviest usage in the US.



RICHARD

[ruirib]

quote:Originally posted by azaz932001

I have had the occasional time out but only if I go on the forum very late at night here in the UK. I suppose because of the time difference this must be the time of heaviest usage in the US.



RICHARD

It's probably the app pool recycle time. I'm on the same time as you and I get it around 00:00 AM or 1:00 AM.

[Anthem]

Hi guys,

Just wanted to bring to your attention that at around 5pm EST I couldn't get into the forums for a couple of minutes and got this 'time out' message:

Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0113'

Script timed out

/forum/Default.asp

The maximum amount of time for a script to execute was exceeded. You can change this limit by specifying a new value for the property Server.ScriptTimeout or by changing the value in the IIS administration tools.

[yogani]

Thanks Anthem:

It happens here on my end quite often. I was hoping I was the only one.

If it continues, and others are reporting load time and timeout problems, we will probably move the forum to a new host. It should not affect operations at all, except for a short shutdown. This has been discussed with our Snitz expert, Ruirib, and he is willing to continue with us in that mode, which is very good. Tech support like he has been providing so well is essential to run the forum. As far as we can tell, it is the hosting service, and affecting only the AYP forum, not the other forums he is handling.

Karma?

That's okay, we have the inner silence and we will just keep on trucking. That is stillness in action.

The guru is in you.

[yogani99]

Hi All:

The forum was not moved to a new host last month (discussed in last post) because the load time delays we were experiencing became less for a while. Now they seem to be back, with several commenting about it offline.

Is anyone else experiencing load time delays and timeouts with the AYP forums?

The guru is in you.

[tantien]

Hi Yogani:

Just for the record I have never experienced any load time delays. Never timed out.  Guy

[yogani99]

Thanks Guy:

Apparently not many are having load delay problems. Thank goodness for that. For the few who have this probem, it can deteriorate steadily and become severe.

I am running old technology here (Win98 -- can't bring myself to upgrade and start over reloading the huge amount of software running pretty well here), and have tried several things to improve performance on a couple of applications. Both are browser-based. The AYP forum is one of them. Yahoo mail is the other.

One thing that seems to help, is purging the browser cache -- temporary files. This can be done in the browser tools menu (delete temp files), or using a cleanup utility like Windows disk cleanup or Norton clean sweep. I use the latter.

This improves both the forum load times and Yahoo mail performace. These seem to bog down over time in unison. Then I purge the temp files and they run okay again. Anyone know why?

The guru is in you.  

[weaver]

Hello Yogani,

I have never experienced long load times of the forum and I read it quite a bit. I am running Win2000 with Netscape 7.0 on a 2 GHz PC with 768 MB of RAM. But on other systems, especially with less memory, then the IE temp. files can slow load times because the browser checks them first before loading a page. But any amount of RAM at least 256 MB should be adequate for running most sites smoothly.

I understand that you may hesitate to upgrade, I did that too for a long time before leaving Win98, the thing I did was to buy a new harddrive, then install everything new there, with Win2000 which I like best, and test everything, and still have the old harddrive as a backup, then switch over using the new one.

[yogani99]

Hi Weaver:

Thanks for the tech info.

I am still on 256 MB RAM, which has not been a problem until the past six months or so, since we started with the Snitz forum SW. Perhaps the temp file backlog has gotten much bigger with the forum SW, and more memory is needed to go through it all with each click. Within a week or so, 500 MB or more in temp files can build up here (thousands of small files), and by then the AYP forums and Yahoo mail will be choking. I think we are finally getting a handle on managing it (purge the temp file regularly), though this does not explain clocked long load times (bottom of this page) or timeouts on the database server, unless the big temp file backlog is causing corrupted scripts to be sent to the database which it can't read properly. It could be a particular type of temp file being produced by the database or forum SW that is causing the problem. Comments on that, anyone?  

The guru is in you.

[weaver]

Yogani,

Your experience with 500 MB of temp. files after 1 week sounds very high. I assume that you refer to Internet Explorer (version?) and your computer as an end user, and not the server computer that hosts the forum (since you mentioned the hosting service for the forum in another post). In any case, in the Settings under Tools > Internet Options by Temp. Internet Files in IE you can set the max. amount of disk space to use, for example to 100 MB, then you wouldn't have to delete them regularly.

On another 700 MHz computer with Win98 and 128 MB of RAM where I read the forum as well, I have 85 MB of temp. files dating back to Oct. 2005, and I haven't experienced any slow load times on that computer either. It would be interesting to hear from more users as well and what specs they have.

The time it takes to go through the temp. files on a user computer would depend on both the amount of RAM and the CPU speed, but any CPU above some 500 MHz should handle it reasonably. The timeouts on the database server would be an issue with the host computer itself or with the forum scripts, and not with any particular user using the forum.

[yogani99]

Hi Weaver:

I have 700 MHz, 256 MB RAM and IE 6.0. This is not the host server, user only, but as administrator, which may or may not have extra tech baggage attached. For some reason, the temp file limit was set at 1 GB. I just reduced it to 100 MB. Hopefully that will not limit performance.

Here is an interesting wrinkle. As soon as I go into the forum, the temp files go up several MB and up 5-10 MB after a few rounds of surfing the forum.

In additon, if I go to the MS Disk Cleanup utility and view the internet temp files, there are 33 Snitz folders plus a 16 MB "index.dat" file there. The folders all have a few thousand Snitz files in them (each!), about 100 MB per folder. A lot of stuff. What is even stranger is that after I do the cleanup, the value on the cleanup utility goes to zero, but all the files just mentioned are still there. What is all this? I have no idea. Finally, the temp file is called C:\\WINDOWS\\Local Settings\\Temporary Internet Files\\Content.IE5, and I am on IE6. There is no IE6 temp file, so this folder maybe is a holdover from a previous version of IE? It is the one the cleanup utility pulls up, and there are no others at this location in Windows.  

I am tempted to delete all of this Snitz stuff manually, as the utility shows nothing there and can't seem to touch it, but better see what the Snitz expert has to say first.
Rui!

I have not checked or done anything with the temp files for Firefox, but have experienced similar delays there the few times I tried it. Maybe it uses the same temp files as IE?

Am I putting anyone to sleep yet? Back to yoga...

The guru is in you.

[ruirib]

Yogani,

I regularly visit 6 Snitz based forums, which means I go there several times a day. My temporary internet files occupy less than 100 MB, in total.

You can delete all the stuff manually. There is no risk doing that.

Rui

[yogani99]

Hi Rui:

I deleted the 3 GB of Snitz files manually, but the 16 MB "index.dat" file could not be deleted or moved -- "access denied." Is that a Snitz file? The first time I went back into the forum, 18 new Snitz folders showed up in the temp file. None of this is visible in the cleanup utilities, so you may have it too, invisible stuff piling up in there. On top of that there is the rapid pile-up of visible temp files here which can (and must) be deleted with utilities regularly or the whole thing jams up.

Is there a history of Win98 having difficulties with Snitz? What is happening here does not seem normal based on everything you and others are telling me.

Weaver, the 100 MB temp file limit did not work. It jammed up quickly. So I set it to 5 GB to account for the 3 GB of invisible files (now deleted but coming back) plus the ongoing pile-up of visible files. Fortunately I have a big hard drive. It is running better!

Thanks.

The guru is in you.