Rainmeter is working ridiculously slowly

[a2h]

So I start up Rainmeter, set up ENIGMA, and wait for it to load.

Couple of minutes later... nothing.

I right click on Rainmeter's icon, and no menu appears till around a minute later.

Then, ENIGMA finally appears. Except it's... frozen. Completely still. Click. I get that wonderful white overlay Vista/7 uses... oh hang on, Notepad just appeared 10 seconds after clicking on "Notes".

Why is Rainmeter so slow?

My computer overall is not slow, and it's specs are:

Windows 7 RC Build 7100
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0 Ghz
NVIDIA 8800 GT
2GB RAM

How is this possible? I love ENIGMA, and back when it was first released I had to fall back on Samurize. Now I'm interested in desktop widgets again, and Samurize is quite old now.

Thanks for any help.

[Chewtoy]

Well. First off. You're running win7 with 2GB RAM... Get more!

Second. You can go to the Rainmeter.ini (when rainmeter is closed) and delete all the info in it and save. That will make rainmeter boot with no skins. So now you can right-click on the rainmeter-icon in the tray menu and choose what skins you want to have.
This will make rainmeter use less resources as it doesn't have to read in all the info of skins you're not using.

[a2h]

Alright, I do that, then load Enigma\_Home, and after half a minute or so it appears, lag free! Surprising, until I clicked "Notes", and as soon as I did, Rainmeter was back to lag time.

Also, are you serious? 2GB is not enough? Do you use RAM intensive applications all day?

[jsmorley]

Alright, I do that, then load Enigma\_Home, and after half a minute or so it appears, lag free! Surprising, until I clicked "Notes", and as soon as I did, Rainmeter was back to lag time.

Also, are you serious? 2GB is not enough? Do you use RAM intensive applications all day?

The behavior you are seeing has nothing to do with how much memory you have or how fast your computer is. That comment about "get more" when you have 2Gig with Windows 7 was just pointless. Rainmeter will run just fine on really ancient hardware with minimal memory. I help DEVELOP Rainmeter on Windows 7 with 2Gig of memory.

So let's try to really debug this. Can you try running some different skins (leaving "notes" off for now) and see if it is the "notes" skin alone that is giving you the problem?

First, edit the Rainmeter.ini file and change all lines that say "Active=" to "0" (they may be "1" or "2" or even "3" now.

Rainmeter.ini can be found at:

Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\Application Data\Rainmeter
Windows Vista / Win7: C:\Users\YourName\Appdata\Roaming\Rainmeter

Now restart Rainmeter. It should come right up and have an icon in the system tray that you can right click. If this icon is not there and reacting to a right click in less than 4 or 5 seconds, then we have a bigger problem which isn't related to "skins". We can cross that bridge when we come to it though.

Now using the right-click context menu for Rainmeter in the system tray, hover over "Configs" and find "Tranquil". Hover over that and find "System". Hover over that and find "System-C.ini". Click that.

Now a nice system monitor should appear on your screen. It should appear within 1-5 seconds at most. Now right click the Rainmeter system tray icon. Is is still working ok? It should pop up in milliseconds when right-clicked. If not, then we seem to have a problem related to "skins" in general, probably some AntiVirus issue. But let's assume it is ok.

Now using the same method load some other skins. Load some other Tranquil skins like the "clock" and some Enigma skins as well, but stay away from "Notes" for now. How is the behavior?

Assuming all is working ok, then let's load "Notes" and see if it tanks... If so, then it would appear that you have a problem with just that skin, and we can debug further from there.

So try all this and report back on what you found. Then we can use that information to debug further. We will get you working fine, not to worry.

[a2h]

The behavior you are seeing has nothing to do with how much memory you have or how fast your computer is. That comment about "get more" when you have 2Gig with Windows 7 was just pointless. Rainmeter will run just fine on really ancient hardware with minimal memory. I help DEVELOP Rainmeter on Windows 7 with 2Gig of memory.

That comment was aimed at the remark about my RAM not being enough.

Now using the right-click context menu for Rainmeter in the system tray, hover over "Configs" and find "Tranquil". Hover over that and find "System". Hover over that and find "System-C.ini". Click that.

Now a nice system monitor should appear on your screen. It should appear within 1-5 seconds at most.

16 seconds.

Now right click the Rainmeter system tray icon. Is is still working ok? It should pop up in milliseconds when right-clicked. If not, then we seem to have a problem related to "skins" in general, probably some AntiVirus issue. But let's assume it is ok.

8 seconds.

EDIT: Actually, I'll try and see if avast may be causing any issues...

EDIT2: No it's not, but in any case I'm going to be switching to Microsoft Security Essentials...

[jsmorley]

That comment was aimed at the remark about my RAM not being enough.
16 seconds.
8 seconds.

EDIT: Actually, I'll try and see if avast may be causing any issues...

EDIT2: No it's not, but in any case I'm going to be switching to Microsoft Security Essentials...

So you get really slow performance with Rainmeter even with no skins loaded? There has to be some conflict or something. If you want to debug further, get this free program

Process Explorer: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

You don't even have to install it, just unzip it and run it. After you run it, select "File / Save as" and save the output as a text file. Now start Rainmeter and "File / Save as" again with a different name. Zip up those two text files and attach them to a reply here so I can take a look at it.

[a2h]

So you get really slow performance with Rainmeter even with no skins loaded? There has to be some conflict or something. If you want to debug further, get this free program

Process Explorer: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

You don't even have to install it, just unzip it and run it. After you run it, select "File / Save as" and save the output as a text file. Now start Rainmeter and "File / Save as" again with a different name. Zip up those two text files and attach them to a reply here so I can take a look at it.

http://i33.tinypic.com/20rurub.png

(left is after Rainmeter)

That, and DWM having slightly increased CPU usage and Rainmeter having opened.

[dragonmage]

DWM?

[sgtevmckay]

DWM=Desktop Windows Manager
Formaly known as DCE

More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Window_Manager

The usage of the DWM resources will increase in Vista and 7 as the DWM is now the main Aero and Desktop GUI controller. Any thing that is placed to or run on or from the desktop will be controlled by the DWM, and this accounts for Rainmeter resource usage being higher in Vista and 7 over XP. Especially if you are using the Aero GUI styles/Shell

Rainmeter may be a bit of an issue for the DWM, and I have been aware of this for a while. In as much that the DWM may not know how to handle Rainmeter on the desktop, because Rainmeter does not comply with the new DWM architecture, and that's ok because a part of teh DWM's job is to help programs compensate to the new shell.
This is also part of the reason that when we place Rainmeter to desktop, that is where it goes, Rainmeter and the DWM have done exactly what we have told it to do. The desktop actually being below the Aero styles shell interface (ie. Rainmeter seems to disappear.).

I seriously doubt that this issue is directly related to the DWM handling, unless there is a program running that is really tasking the DWM to figure out how to draw that program to the Desktop.

[a2h]

Are there any ideas on what may be causing the problem?