Author Topic: Farr freezes / delays : solved but... (Read 26422 times)

Armando · « **on:** January 29, 2012, 07:00 PM »

For a while I got intermittent (and extremely annoying) farr freeze / delays. Didn't do anything about it as I didn't have the time to debug.

Recently decided to solve the problem: Turned out that it was the same problem described in this thread

But the problem is now with Microsoft Security Essentials (I changed antivirus since last time). Excluding ini files in MSE's "Settings" didn't seem to be enough and so I decided to exclude farr's process entirely from MSE's scans. That did it. No more freezes.

Now... I'm wondering how bad does this affect farr's user experience in general : so many people use MSE, I'm certainly not the only one experiencing long farr freezes (I'm on a 3y old laptop, 2.2ghz core2duo). In my case, the freezes were long enough to make me think of installing something else, even after years of use and enthusiasm. If I was new to farr I might have just dumped it right away for something that felt speedier.

Maybe something in the installation process, or somewhere VERY obvious should warn the user? Dunno...

Farr doesn't deserve to look bad because of some ill-mannered AV.

Scott_Y · « **Reply #1 on:** January 31, 2012, 09:08 PM »

I sometimes experience overly-long delays such as after two keystrokes, the second character does not appear in the search box while I am waiting, waiting, waiting. And I do have MSE running, so perhaps this is the same problem as you report here, Armando.

Question: What do I enter in MSE's settings to exclude "farr's process entirely"? Thanks.

Armando · « **Reply #2 on:** January 31, 2012, 09:49 PM »

I got exactly the same very annoying symptoms where it just felt that going to the start menu clicking my way through deep hierarchies would be quicker.

- Open MSE's main window (double click on tray icon)
- click "Settings" tab
- On the left part (column) of the MSE window : Click on "Excluded processes"
- Still in MSE, browse to your farr folder and select the FindAndRunRobot.exe process.

That's it. DISCLAIMER : it's not considered a safe practice to exclude processes from an AV scan. In this case though, I don't feel it's too risky. If others want to comment (I'm no security expert) on that issue, they're more than welcome...

You could also click on "Excluded file types" and type "ini" as the extension to exclude. That didn't seem to help, but who knows...

Unfortunately I don't have more time to explore alternatives.

Tell me if that fixes your "overly long delays" problem. (Here it fixed them completely and farr is running as it should

and is much more useful this way).

Scott_Y · « **Reply #3 on:** January 31, 2012, 11:50 PM »

Your description of the delay is perfect: Wondering if it wouldn't be faster to go through the Windows Start menu. Heh.

Oh my... IMMEDIATE speedup after adding FARR to the Excluded Processes list for MSE!!! I didn't exclude anything else.

Now all the characters appear in the search box as fast as I can type them -- no more waiting for the second character to appear, wondering "What in the world is FARR doing???"

Simple yet brilliant solution, Armando! Thanks so much! FARR is like a whole new program now -- stunning! Win7/64

Armando · « **Reply #4 on:** February 01, 2012, 03:17 AM »

Great!
Now this is why I took the time to post this in the first place. I knew I couldn't be alone with this problem. Hopefully, we're not the majority.

daddydave · « **Reply #5 on:** February 01, 2012, 07:35 AM »

Looks like I may be switching from Avast to MSE in the near future, just so I can turn this off.(The problem occurs with Avast, also)

tomos · « **Reply #6 on:** February 01, 2012, 07:44 AM »

I only had a very short delays - no freezes (Win7) - but excluding it from MSE fixes that -
thanks Armando

Armando · « **Reply #7 on:** February 15, 2012, 10:43 AM »

This thread was mentioned in the Newsletter.
So just taking the opportunity add a few words : removing the farr process from the antivirus' scan makes such a difference, it's absolutely worth it.
I can't believe I didn't look into that before.

grandpastan · « **Reply #8 on:** February 15, 2012, 02:39 PM »

Had the exact same problem. Changed my exclude settings and also good now. Thanks.

lanux128 · « **Reply #9 on:** February 19, 2012, 11:54 PM »

@Armando: thanks for this tip! was having the same problem on my netbook..

Armando · « **Reply #10 on:** February 22, 2012, 11:19 AM »

You're welcome !

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** February 22, 2012, 04:16 PM »

Great work Armando. I will certainly put this tip in the help file, but I should probably also try to detect the presence of MSE and report the tip to the user if it is found running.

Armando · « **Reply #12 on:** February 23, 2012, 02:25 PM »

My pleasure -- happy to be somewhat useful!

I should probably also try to detect the presence of MSE and report the tip to the user if it is found running

Keep in mind that the problem might not be MSE's exclusivity. This post suggests that Avast might cause problems too :

Looks like I may be switching from Avast to MSE in the near future, just so I can turn this off.(The problem occurs with Avast, also)
-daddydave (February 01, 2012, 07:35 AM)

I can't verify the hypothesis though, so maybe other users with different AVs can chime in.

DougalS · « **Reply #13 on:** April 01, 2012, 05:16 PM »

I haven't noticed FARR freezing with ZA (Kaspersky AV).

easye · « **Reply #14 on:** April 02, 2012, 07:14 PM »

Wow! I've been using FARR for years and never knew this. Figured the slowness just had something to do with FARR's search method (i.e. not caching an index). But this change made a big difference.

Hard to believe, but FARR may be even MORE useful now.

alias · « **Reply #15 on:** April 03, 2012, 07:05 AM »

Thanks, Armando! FWIW, this is also the same problem I've been having for well over a year, as described in this thread...

Mark

Armando · « **Reply #16 on:** April 08, 2012, 05:45 PM »

Thanks, Armando! FWIW, this is also the same problem I've been having for well over a year, as described in this thread...

Mark
-alias (April 03, 2012, 07:05 AM)

Cool ! And... You're welcome !
I must admit that the delays were so bad that I almost installed Launchy !!

:-)

f0dder · « **Reply #17 on:** January 04, 2013, 11:11 AM »

Had the freezes/delays as well - enough to irritate me slightly, but not enough to actually figure out how to fix it. Had missed this thread, and only saw it because of this other thread. Ignored FARR process in MSE, presto, blazing speed.

Wouldn't go as far as calling MSE ill-mannered - to extract icons from executables, the files need to be opened and read from... one could argue that scanning should only be done when attempting to execute a file, but then I could make a program that simply reads malware from a .jpg and executes it from memory.

link68759 · « **Reply #18 on:** February 26, 2013, 02:43 PM »

Ever since the new version, across two different laptops and my desktop, FARR has been sluggish.

I just excluded it from MSE and I will make a new thread if that doesn't fix it. I don't have MSE on my desktop and I think the new version is still slow there.'

Additionally, ever since this new version, klipkeeper hasn't been working properly. It seems to miss several registers and it's very annoying.

erikts · « **Reply #19 on:** September 30, 2013, 09:53 PM »

Thanks to you, Armando. I have the same problem running FARR on Windows 8 64. I put FARR in the exclude list of Windows Defender (MSE version for Windows 8 ) and the search is near instantaneous.

blithen · « **Reply #20 on:** December 22, 2013, 02:41 AM »

holy CRAP THIS IS AMAZING, thank you for posting this...

IainB · « **Reply #21 on:** January 18, 2014, 05:23 PM »

I hadn't especially noticed FARR being consistently slow, though it had been at times, but after reading this thread some time back, I ended up putting 3 processes in MSE's exclude list, because I had noticed some slowness at times:
explorer.exe
FindAndRunRobot.exe
xplorer2_64.exe

(This is on a an HP-ENVY 14 laptop with Win7-64 Hme Premium.)

I couldn't measure it, but I did get the general impression that things were consistently quicker with those processes after that (though I don't use Windows Explorer directly all that much).
If you use a Windows-based computer a lot, as I do, anything that potentially improves efficiency and/or reduces wait times or overheads in a frequently-used process is generally a good idea. Incremental and small time-savings could add up to a lot, over an extended period of usage.