Variable delay starting a .dot application using a thin client

[Jason Ratcliffe]

Hi,

We've got a small .net application launcher which is run each time a user
connects to our terminal services server instead of the standard shell. We
found that it takes a variable amount of time of this application to start.
Sometimes it's more or less instant, other times it can be over 15 seconds.

My initial thought was that the .Net Framework may not have been loaded, but
we have a another .Net application running on the server continuously.

Does anyone have any suggestions about reducing this variability?

Many thanks,

Jason

--
Informatics Manager, Critical Care
Central Manchester Healthcare Trust

[Luke Zhang [MSFT]]

Hello,

When the application is starting, is there any code to be run? for example,
in the a form_load method to connect to a database? The dely may occur when
these code are executing.

Regards,

Luke Zhang
Microsoft Online Community Support

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[Jason Ratcliffe]

Hi Luke,

The initial applet is based on the updater application block, and simply
starts another vb.net application in the most current directory, which is
determined from an XML key in the applet's .config file. There is no user
interface to this applet.

The second applet reads some settings from an ini file to launch MS Access
XP pointing to the appropriate database file. Again, there is no user
interface.

The delay appears to occur before the server starts loading MSAccess, and I
suspect it is around loading components of the .net framework. Any
suggestions would be greatly appriciated!

Jason

--
Informatics Manager, Critical Care
Central Manchester Healthcare Trust
"Luke Zhang [MSFT]" wrote:

Hello,

When the application is starting, is there any code to be run? for example,
in the a form_load method to connect to a database? The dely may occur when
these code are executing.

Regards,

Luke Zhang
Microsoft Online Community Support

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that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
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rights.)

[Luke Zhang [MSFT]]

As I know, the updater application block will first connect to the
deployment server (actually an IIS Server) to check if there is a new
version avaible. Is it possible that the delay occur when connecting to
this IIS server? For example, the IIS server is down? Normally, loading
..NET component won't take a long time.

Regards,

Luke Zhang
Microsoft Online Community Support

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[Jason Ratcliffe]

Hi Luke,

That won't be it. In this case, the applet simply starts the applet as
defined in the .config file. The communication with with IIS and subsequent
downloading is handled by a separately running service. That said,
considering it is only starting an applet, it's importing a lot of libraries,
some of which must be redundant:-

Imports System
Imports System.Collections
Imports System.ComponentModel
Imports System.Configuration
Imports System.Data
Imports System.Diagnostics
Imports System.Globalization
Imports System.Xml
Imports System.Reflection
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Threading
Imports System.Windows.Forms

It attempts to see if another copy is running. I imagine stripping this down
to one or two lines of code without concurrency checking and the libraries
should speed things up, but it still doesn't explain the variation in load
times.

Regards,

Jason

--
Informatics Manager, Critical Care
Central Manchester Healthcare Trust
"Luke Zhang [MSFT]" wrote:

As I know, the updater application block will first connect to the
deployment server (actually an IIS Server) to check if there is a new
version avaible. Is it possible that the delay occur when connecting to
this IIS server? For example, the IIS server is down? Normally, loading
.NET component won't take a long time.

Regards,

Luke Zhang
Microsoft Online Community Support

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that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
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rights.)

[Luke Zhang [MSFT]]

Hello,

All of below are libraries in .NET framework, I haven't heard that they
will cause a delay when they are loading:

Imports System
Imports System.Collections
Imports System.ComponentModel
Imports System.Configuration
Imports System.Data
Imports System.Diagnostics
Imports System.Globalization
Imports System.Xml
Imports System.Reflection
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Threading
Imports System.Windows.Forms

Id you have VS.NET insatlled on the same server? Maybe you can execute the
project in VS.NET and check line by line to see what code cause the delay.

Regards,

Luke Zhang
Microsoft Online Community Support

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[Jason Ratcliffe]

Hi Luke,

The delay never really showed in VS.Net, and I'm rather loathe to install VS
on the server. I'll try dumping some of the libraries - maybe that will go
some way to reducing it.

Thanks,

Jason
--
Informatics Manager, Critical Care
Central Manchester Healthcare Trust
"Luke Zhang [MSFT]" wrote:

Hello,

All of below are libraries in .NET framework, I haven't heard that they
will cause a delay when they are loading:

Imports System
Imports System.Collections
Imports System.ComponentModel
Imports System.Configuration
Imports System.Data
Imports System.Diagnostics
Imports System.Globalization
Imports System.Xml
Imports System.Reflection
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Threading
Imports System.Windows.Forms

Id you have VS.NET insatlled on the same server? Maybe you can execute the
project in VS.NET and check line by line to see what code cause the delay.

Regards,

Luke Zhang
Microsoft Online Community Support

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rights.)

[Luke Zhang [MSFT]]

Another way is to add some debug code in your application, for example, add
some code to record time in a Text file so that we can know the exact time
each module execute.

Regards,

Luke Zhang
Microsoft Online Community Support

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