Bug: Start menu freezing for 30-90 seconds when accessing sub-folders in All Programs

Sluggish behaviour triggered by folders with lots of sub-folders and/or shortcuts?

from Stardock Forums

I've come across an issue when clicking on folders in All Programs that have about a lot of sub-folders or shortcuts inside them. For example, the 3DPlanesoft one has 20 sub-folders which contain 4-5 shortcuts in them and it will freeze the Start menu in place for 30-90 seconds. During this time, the menu is unresponsive and even states "Not responding" if I repeatedly click on it. All these screensavers are installed in the same C:\Program Files (x86)\3Planesoft folder with the executables in the C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folder. This issue never occurred on Windows 7, ever. It eventually unfreezes after about a minute to a minute and half but in the meantime the Start menu is stubbornly displayed over everything and cannot be pushed to the background until it sorts itself out. Once it unfreezes then the All Programs menu can be accessed without further issue until I reboot.

I also have similar sluggish behaviour when opening the Games folder, set to display as a menu rather than a link, that contains around 90-100 entries yet it is reading entries from the Game Explorer folder on my C: drive (C:/Users/Administrator/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/GameExplorer) and the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GameUX keys and not entries scattered all over my 256 GB Crucial m4 SSD. As such I don't understand quite why it is so slow compared with my previous Windows 7 install. On Windows 7, this same menu would always display within 5-10 seconds at most; in Windows 8 it's anything up to 90 seconds. If this only happened intermittently then I could live with but it happens everything when accessing this large folders.

Why is Start8 so slow on my system? Is it a bug due to inefficient caching? Or does my system have too many folders under All Programs and Games for Start8 to handle? These menus are EXACTLY the same as Windows 7 as I did an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro, choosing to keep all my settings and files. Also, Windows 8 is installed, as was Windows 7, on an SSD!

start8
8,771 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

This is not normal and honestly it sounds like either the OS is trying to find something on a network drive, or the drive is stalling.

All Start8 is doing is opening the folders via the standard apis, getting a directory listing and obtaining the icon again via the OS apis.  Given your problem with the games popout menu which passes responsibility to the OS to obtain the listing, build the menu and show the icon, it very much suggests some sort of HD access related problem.

I tried installing a large number of those screensavers on a test machine and the folders expand instantly as I would have expected.

Have you run a SMART check on your SSD?

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

There are no problems reported by SMART on my boot SSD and Windows is otherwise very responsive and loads extremely fast (20 seconds from turning my PC on to it displaying the Start screen) and a further 5 seconds to display the desktop with around 50 shortcuts on it.

As I type this, I'm waiting for Start8 to close the Start menu which has again frozen when I tried to access All Programs and clicked on the 3Planesoft folder to open it. It has just closed now after 45 seconds or so. It'll probably work fine now until I next reboot.

Is there anyway to record a log of Start8 in use that might pinpoint why this issue is occurring on my machine?

This could be issue related to the new Windows Defender software as I noticed it was using 32% CPU earlier on?

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

I've done some further investigation of this issue and found that the Start Menu and All Programs menu works fine so long as I do NOT click on either the 3Planesoft (screensaver) or Games folders. If I do then the menu freezes for a random amount of time, usually 30 seconds but sometimes over a minute. The commonality is that both of those menus contains lots of game shortcuts and sub-folders. My PC still works fine but the Start menu is stuck on top of everything else and won't close until it unfreezes itself.

I've tried using Task Manager to check what programs/services are being used but it is difficult to see because of the frozen Start menu. The only thing I noticed that was unusual was Windows Defender (Antimalware Service Executable) using 13% CPU cycles, 50 MB of memory and 4 MB/s for drive access. Yet I added the C:\ProgramData and C:\Users folders to its exclusion list. I believe it is Windows Defender that is causing this sluggish behaviour.

I'm wondering if no-one else has reported this because most people are using fresh Windows 8 installs with very little software installed. Mine is carried over from Windows 7 with 99% of the same stuff I had there still accessible from the Start8 menu.

Again I''ll ask if there any way to record logs for Start8 usage that might help identify the cause of this issue please?

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

I disabled Windows Defender and, lo and behold, the 3Planesoft folder opens within 2-3 seconds at most and Start8 no longer freezes so that is definitely the cause of the sluggish behaviour on my system. Also Game Explorer, in list format, now takes 5 seconds to display 90+ games rather than the 30-40 seconds it was taking before. Obviously, I don't want to have my only anti-virus software disabled so I'm going to have to find out how to stop it from scanning the folders where the All Programs and Games Explorer shortcuts are. I thought they were in C:\ProgramData and C:\Users as they've both been added to my exclusion list. Any ideas?

Oddly, I was using the latest version of Microsoft Security Essentials with Windows 7 and it did not exhibit this issue when using the Start menu so I can only assume that this is a bug of some kind, one that Microsoft won't be in a hurry to fix as they likely don't approve of people using software like Start8 in the first place.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

Yes getting the exact thing happening here too, only started today was working fine before

and yes, stopping windows defender stops the long pausing

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

Why dont you use other free anti-virus in the meanwhile? Like Avast or Avira?

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting tfouto, reply 7
Why dont you use other free anti-virus in the meanwhile? Like Avast or Avira?
End of tfouto's quote


Well ive stopped using start8 for the time being