Wits End Now

[christoph]

Hi Guys,

Bit melodrammatic but this seems like a final association with Flowcode and ALL my projects now, unless I can somehow get ONE issue resolved which suddenly appeared early in 2016! I spent most of last year 'struggling on' but as my projects have got more complicated, needing increasing tweaks, therefore compiling programming and re-runs etc., it is now totally impractical to continue any more due to the extraordinairily long time it has been taking to compile and send to chip even when everything is perfectly in order - never mind if it stalls somewhere on the way, as one can imagine!! The nub of the problem is that at any point where a few dotted lines appear for what always used to be one or two seconds, they take between 5 and 8 MINUTES! Therefore, just to even Compile (which has 2 such positions), it takes between 10 and 16 minutes (plus a bit more for the bits between). I just haven't got that sort of time available. I have tried everything I can think of since the problem started and I have raised this on the forum a number of times and had helpful ideas and possibilities but nothing has solved it.

SO I took the 'bull by the horns' last week and ditched my hard drive and operating system after checking EVERY aspect of my pretty powerful Asus lap top regarding hardware, memory, Motherboard and dual core Intel chip set and as everything was 100%, I have fitted a new SSD Sandisk drive, and purchased Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit ( arguably the most stableMS Windows platform ). All now installed and everything running smoothly and hardly anything on the machine. This was to eliminate ALL POSSIBILITY of any problems and to be EXTRA CAUTIOUS, I Downloaded the simple example programme from Matrix that you see in the attachments and guess what?? IT TOOK AROUND 7 MINUTES !!!! Totally gutted - I tried one of my simple charts off disc AND off my external drive with the same results !

I have done all the usual things in the past like checking the set ups, un-installing and re-installing v4, PPP etc. etc. etc. - you name it I have done it - apart from SOMETHING but I dont understand how I could now have EXACTLY the same problem even with a TOTALLY new system AND trying the Flowcode example before ANY other FLOWCODE programme HAD BEEN TRIED!!!

HELP!

Best regards,

Chris

[christoph]

Sorry,
Files to follow - have had a call.....
Chris

[Benj]

Hi Chris,

Have you tried the 30 day trial of Flowcode 7. It has a new PIC compiler which compiles a LOT faster then previously. Hopefully you will be surprised at the speed increase.

Slowness with the BoostC compiler, in terms of taking minutes to compile could be linked to an antivirus which is scanning the compiler as it compiles and slowing it down by an exponential rate. White listing the compiler or disabling the antivirus should give you a significant speed increase. Which antivirus are you using?

[christoph]

HI guys,
Here are the 3 files for information. The first is just to show where I took the source from and the other two are my very FIRST attempt on this brand new computer set up to compile and I think it looks OK but in any case it still took about 13 minutes to do.
Hi Ben,
Thanks for responding to my post so quickly but whilst I appreciate all the obvious benefits of the latest software and hardware I was quite happy to accept the speed that Flowcode v4 had always provided until this problem suddenly occurred. I will stress here that it was ok one day, I turned off the computer, normal shutdown but next day after a normal start up was when this problem started - literally at THAT point and without any other program or software problems before or after.In any case I can't afford to upgrade and there must be some salient reason for this problem; which could overcome.
Many thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions that you or anyone can possibly come up with.
Regards,
Chris

[EtsDriver]

Do you happen to have the compress files active on C drive? That could cause problems... (The ratio text tells that it might be a case)

[Benj]

Yes it does look like Windows is compressing your files, this will likely significantly add to the compilation time.

You didn't actually attach any of the .fcf project files so I cannot say for sure how long they take to compile here. However my guess would be less than 1 minute for medium programs.

[medelec35]

To me it looks like the files are being run from the .zip examples file.
What about extracting zip files in to a directory on the hard-drive before compiling stage?

Martin

[christoph]

Hi all,
Only just able to follow up from yesterday:

Hi EtsDriver and Benj, good idea but I disabled compression AND indexing right from the start and just checked and they ARE disabled.

Hi Martin, Well with the first flowchart being a Matrix example having this problem which wasn't zipped or anything and was such a simple one I thought I would try a simple one from my projects - first off a saved disc and then off my external hard drive and in both cases I tried my older flowcharts which HAD been ok before this problem AND I hadn't updated or done anything to them, then some of my recent ones which have ALWAYS had this problem but all with the same result. None of MY files have been zipped or compressed anyway. I spent last night going through EVERYTHING including all the SYSTEM stuff and neither my manual checks or the automated computer ones say anything but allis in perfect order. I focused on the memory cards for a while but no problem there either. The two wierd things - to me - are the fact this happened literally between turning the computer off one night and back on the next day - both actions were normal and NOTHING ELSE AT ALL was affected and the one or two programmes that I have put on this week are doing everything much faster than before, with the new SSD. The other oddity is that this IS still happening with just Flowcode in spite of a new, faster SSD AND legit. new, Windows 7 Home Premium ( no not the N version!! ).

I am not aufait with BIOS but could this be something to do with it? I HAVE been through EVERY item of this machine and it is way over the spec required and all the bios stuff I looked at SEEMED to be ok but I don't know enough about it. However, it seems to be the only possibility left as it is still a problem after all my upgrading and checking - but ONLY with Flowcode.

ANY IDEAS GRATEFULLY RECEIVED and tested....

Regards

Chris

[Benj]

Hi Chris,

this happened literally between turning the computer off one night and back on the next day

This could be linked to an Antivirus update? There must be something unique to both your PCs that is causing this lengthy compile time. Are you using an Antivirus? If so which one and have you tried temporarily disabling it.

I highly doubt it's a bios issue. One thing you could try is booting Windows into safe mode and trying to compile then. This should force your other Windows programs e.g. antivirus to not be running and hopefully compilation will be much faster.

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-start-w ... de-2624540

[Steve]

Hi Chris,

(Ben beat me to it, but I'll post what I had already written anyway...)

This has been mentioned before, but to me it looks like an update to some kind of antivirus software or similar is causing this. You could try white-listing the Flowcode exe and the BoostC exes in whatever software you use (i.e. set them as exceptions). Also try Windows safe mode - that might give us some ideas.

Regards,
Steve.

[christoph]

Hi all,
I REALLY APPRECIATE you fellows taking 'time out' and making suggestions towards solving this problem but I have tried those suggestions a number of times and even uninstalled my antivirus on several occasions. HOWEVER, I haven't tried them on THIS set up on the basis that it didn't cure the problem then but I will try again. My antivirus is BitDefender and have had it for a few years now so was the AV that I was running at the time when this problem arose. I have spoken with them a number of times on Chat (always an immediate answer 24/7 and have ALL ones detail so no wasted time) and theirs were similar suggestions.
Fingers crossed,
Regards,
Chris