Why sooo slow? system resources appear fine..

[JWFdev]

----------------------------------
------------

Once I make and active directory... then heaven forbid install ms exchange 2000 it takes eons to open MMCs for the various setups.

then... just right-clicking to see a menu so I can choose the "properties" window takes forever.

I'm exaggerating a bit.. but it takes at least 8-15 seconds for any Microsoft Management Console to open... THEN... if it is the MMC for MS Exchange or any for the AD... it takes over up to 20 or more.

and then... having to wait up to 15-20 seconds after clicking on another icon in the window is irritating. What I mean is… It’ll finally open the MMC window but take tons of just as much time trying to do anything in it. Again… just right-clicking to see/read a menu takes just as long.

dell 1550 power edge
2 pIII 866
1/2 gb ram - 800 swap

small three machine network
the above is our only DC
just setting up and testing to go live in a few days

even with all the services running and about five other windows open it still shows 99 percent CPU available and 247 mb physical ram available.

What's the deal??? Why is MMC.exe so stinking slow?

It slowed down a lot after I install exchange.... but I reinstalled it and it appears to smoothed-out a bit.

Does MMC.exe by its very design have to wait clock ticks to invoke controls over the services it's manipulating? It's a little spooky to be making changes on something that is running so I'm thinking it all has to do with that?

I don't have many programs on this machine... basically just the ones that come with windows... but all of the programs open fast and I can negotiate with IIS and exchange very quickly through the NICs.

I'm just wondering how out of the ordinary what’s happening to me might be or if everyone else has a frustrating time too, having to wait on this slow program. It just doesn’t make sense.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Thanks
John Ford

 

[SelbyGlenn]

The only time I found MMC was dead slow was after I installed the MSPClient for Proxy2.0 on my machine. Everything was was fine but the MMC became unusable! Removed it and all was fine again. Do you get the same responce from the MMC if you run it from the domain controller? If so then it probably is Exchange. Never got my hands on an Exchange server so i wouldn't be able to help there.

Good luck!

Glenn.

 

[GlenJohnson]

http://www.sysinternals.com/

Process Explorer is a freebie that shows the threads that something is calling up. I have a new dc that would periodically hang at 100%. I used this to find out what thread was calling services.exe. Turned out to be an old install of a cad program. Upgraded the program, then took and installed sp's for it, much better. Glen A. Johnson
Microsoft Certified Professional
glen@nellsgiftbox.com


"Common sense is an instinct for the truth."
Max Jacobs (1876-1944); French writer.

 

[JWFdev]

Thanks Glens... but please let me get this straight...

You're saying that you think MMC is probably calling something that isn't there or is mis-configured and so ends up taking too long to load or do anything?

If I figure out what's being called when I invoke an offending MMC window that it might be a way of investigating this problem?

I'll look into that... but regardless... MMC is very slow even if it is working as designed. They made it wrong. It has to wait on the service it is manipulating instead of the service acknowledging it is in charge... so by it's very design it has to be submissive when it's purpose is to be in control. (I'll humbly admit I'm wrong about this if someone knows different... this is only my guess on how it is currently designed).

I'll assume mine is currently functioning abnormally slow based on your two posts and I welcome and thank you for your comments. I'll keep at it so far as getting to the bottom of why it's doing this...

If you've got a minute, please answer this though...

Go to a machine that isn't part of a Domain or at least not a DC of a domain. Open the MMC from the “My computer” icon. Fish around on the different settings.

Time (approximate) how long it takes for it to open and if it is slow after merely clicking on icons or trees.

Then compare how slow MMC is for doing things on a DC machine.

To me... it appears that most MMC that has some direct connection with active directory, (yes, I know everything has something to do with it) that has a real-time connection with it so far as sharing the USER configurations... IS very slow. It is much more slower than MMC windows like DNS or event viewer, etc.

DNS can utilize the file replicator... so it is slower once I decided to make my zone active. BUT the slowest ones of my MMC windows is MsExchange and Active directory Users, domains and trusts, sites, etc.

Thanks for any time or help with this issue.

Sincerely,
John Ford

Sincerely,
John Ford

 

[SelbyGlenn]

Just a quick thought. How many DC's do you have? How many of them are Global Catalog Servers?

 

[JWFdev]

Hey Glenn,

My first post... Only one.

I have a windows 2000 pro.. (I haven't even logged in to the server yet... only put the user's name into AD

and another w2k server... with no AD

and then the one mentioned in my first post.

But... I was going to use all three without AD and did not know much about exchange but found out I needed AD for it... So I put AD on the Dell rackmount computer and then installed MsExchange.

Here's the thing... First... I tried to install Exchange without AD... then it told me I needed it... but when I checked off a lot of the programs with exchange by choosing custom... then it let me install basice exchange... but it would hang when installing.

I tried it thrice. Hung all three times.

So... it was never installed but some files were there. It would not let me remove it from add/remove programs either.

then I put on AD and reinstalled all of MsExchange... but that hung too.

It hung three times too!

then I reinstalled exchange by command line but chose to do it these ways...

blah\blah\blah\setup /ForestPrep
then
blah\blah\blah\setup /DomainPrep
then
blah\blah\blah\setup

when I did this... everything installed fine... and everything worked.

but MMC was still slow... but extremely slow for exchange and AD

I hadn't used exchange yet... so I was not familiar with how slow MMC would be with it...

But MMC was always slow with AD but in my opinion it was slower since adding exchange.

Yes... the problems installing exchange are making me think it is causing it to be slow with MMC... but I'm thinking only it. I don't know but I'm learning all of this and it's the forth time I've installed windows 2000 server on this machine in the past 3 weeks.

everytime I installed it again I would do a reformat fresh install... and I would do it because I was not familiar with AD... nor DNS...

I have to set up DNS... so I thought... why not AD... it's got a lot of nice features... (I'll never use, well... probably I'd use and like). so I installed AD too.

made mistakes.

things were slow.

reinstall 2 hour session of format, fresh install, blah, blah, blah.

I came here and saw tons of posts mentioning "run dcpromo", etc. etc.

Well... I didn't want to use the machine after I'd made it an AD then taken AD off.. I didn't like some of the folders files around... I didn't want unclean registry, etc.

so I'd do it again.

In other words, in my learning curve I did lots I didn't need to... and tons I shouldn't have... and worried about stuff I didn't need to.

So... naturally I didn't want to do it all over again when I finally got the machine I wanted... just an extremely slow MMC..

However... I do not think Microsoft would put out MMC if it was as irritatingly slow as mine is using exchange or AD... even if they did design it wrong as I was claiming earlier.

Regardless... I was hoping for a quick answer and knowledgeable encouragement or indictment from someone in the know to... yes... reinstall everything again John.

That's where I'm at with this...

BTW... I set up exchange like this because it has two NICs and we are going to use it as our web/email server and NAT to internet for our mini network.

This was a really good suggestion from Microsoft.
"Configuring a Dual-Homed Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server as a Gateway Server"

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?ReleaseID=43539&area=search&ordinal=4

Anyways... if MMC is just having fits because Microsoft made it wrong and it's being hinder by crap left around that the better made working software is not having a problem with... then maybe I should leave it. I don't think it will break. That's what I think is going on... and there's hardly anything about MMC on Microsoft's web site. I think it was just a hurry-up graphical interface to work with their stuff instead of something built to co-exist with the things it's pretending to be the boss of.

I don't think exchange, AD, DNS, SQL, etc. etc... even know that MMC exists!

Any one who has suggestions/corrections I'd appreciate it. Thanks for listening.
Sincerely,
John Ford

 

[SelbyGlenn]

Hi John,

Am I understanding from this that you just wish to know whether MMC's tend to run slowly due to some bad design fault or is there something wrong with your installation. Well I'm afraid it's the latter. I use MMC's all the time. I have one main MMC with plugins for DHCP, DFS, DNS, Users & Computers, Sites & Services, WINS, IIS, Services and MIME Sweeper and often have several of them open and running simultaneously. Response has always been good except for when I had the old proxy client installed (as mentioned above).

If you have the spare hardware I would suggest rungging some tests on a clean install in a new domain starting from scratch to see if you can find the fault. Test the response of the MMC at every possible stage.

Hope this helps,

Glenn.

 

[JWFdev]

I re-installed everything and it runs tons faster now.

but... it's still slow

and then once a person installs Active Directory and/or MSExchange... it's ton's slower.

BUT... it does not take eons after merely clicking on the "+" sign when trying to expand a tree in MMC

Basically... now after reinstalling everything... MMC is slow to open... that's about it. Sometimes slow to open a "Properties" dialogue window... but not slow the next time it's open during this boot session.

So, I'm satisfied I don't have a "wild hair" in there blowing it's mind.

Thanks for your help. Sincerely,
John Ford

 

[GlenJohnson]

Per you

"and then once a person installs Active Directory "

"and I would do it because I was not familiar with AD... nor DNS..."

DNS and AD are linked hand in hand. Check your dns settings again. If you don't know dns, let us know how it's set up. Make sure the [.] zone is GONE.
Glen A. Johnson
Microsoft Certified Professional
glen@nellsgiftbox.com


"What really happens is trivial in comparison to what could occur."
Robert von Musil (1880-1942); Austrian author.