Home Forums Discussions Problems Slow ERx...bug to be fixed or do i need new comput

6.0.9's slow ERx is a known bug; I know this bug is addressed in several places, but do we know if it is a bug that will be fixed in next update or do we need to update hardware (it is not running on my two year old dual core vista laptop)
Thanks!
Art Treiman

Have you tried changing the hardware acceleration?

See below

http://sluthra.x10.bz/v6_tut.html

Having to purchase new computers or even updating existing ones, because of one issue in one update is rather absurd.

You are very correct, Bert. But, as the saying goes, time is money, and I just dont have the 5 minutes per patient to sit and chat with every patient who needs a prescription while i wait for the screen to complete. The laptop must have had integrated acceleration because it wouldn't let me disable. And the hint to edit the registry was for xp, not the 32 bit vista i have, so i pulled the plug this weekend. I tried updating all the drivers and disabling all the bells and whistles, with no benefit. I'm $450 poorer, but the response when i went to prescibe today on the new, 64 bit win7 laptop was instantaneous.

Hello online group.
We actually had AC roll us back from V6 to V5 due to the slow E RX. My husband who is an IT guy and our manager looked at all the options... we have good computers with enough memory etc. It took some doing but I am glad to be back with the V 5 until the bugs are worked out. It seemed like it took more than 5 minutes to go between medications-- something we do all day long. Our advice is to let AC figure out the bugs before saying ok for V6. It's not ready.... So avoid headaches. We'll go forward when there is evidence of the fix.

I did like the look of the new changes and look forward when it's ready to go forward but we aren't going forward with V6 until we see people happy with the speed.

I've been with AC since 2002 and this has been the first bump in the road for us.

Bonnie in Bellingham

@ArtT

I am glad it is faster. My v6s fly too mainly because I am lucky and already have very fast computers.

I was simply saying it is absurd to have to purchase a new computer for an upgrade.

I agree with Bonnie. I would stay with v5. I am concerned with their working on it given the push now for v7. This is my second bump in the road, but it is a MAJOR bump, and the fact there has been NO communication on it from AC and no timetable on when or IF it will be fixed makes it more like a mountain than a bump. Again, how could AC run through a patient and see the delay and still release it?

Bonnie, Bert,

I am so glad to read your posts. I periodically get tempted to upgrade, then read posts like yours. It ain't broke. I won't fix it yet.

Me either, David although it ticks me off that this now delays my Meaningless Use money.

Bert is usually right. If he says "dont' jump", I'm not jumping. Allegedly the total amount of MU money coming to us will be the same if we start next year, it will just be delayed.
I guess we just need to wait for V7 or some communication from AC.

I noticed the following a top the V 6.0.10 change log:

"This update fixes a number of annoyances and other issues found in V6. We do not anticipate another release before V7."

According to other posts, 6.0.10 did not fix the bug causing the slowness of the Rx writer. So I can wait until V7, role back to V5, or upgrade my computer. Am I seeing this correctly??

Oh that would stink very badly... Unfortunately, I can see where you certainly are reading that line pretty accurately... I certainly hope with all this XP Slowness and other kind of things like others who use that specific printer won't have to wait that much longer.... Now the 4th quarter is sort of only about less than two weeks away.... Soooooo:

If V7.0 in some fairly stable and useable fashion were to come along in the next month or so with these old problems properly addressed that would probably be acceptable to most... But that remains to be seen how long til V 7.0 which is sort where you started last segment in the first place.... Fingers Crossed???

Paul

V7 will probably not be out until next year. I would hope that they would another version update prior to that.

We upgraded from 5.0.49 to 6.0.10 this weekend. Today I heard a chorus of SLOW SLOW SLOW from the providers.

Based on threads here I disabled hardware acceleration. On one machine this helped quite a bit. The eRX screen when from 5 seconds (hand timed, not an estimate) down to 1 second. But on another very similar machine the time was about 2 seconds and was not effected by disabling hardware acceleration.

Even at 1-2 seconds for initial draw it's pretty pokey, updates as you work with the screen also take about 1 second and you can see them ripple down the screen.

I have not used this forum in over a year so I only checked with Tech Support before upgrading. I told them we were moving form 5.0.49 and they said "I have heard nothing but good things about 6.0.10". I feel cheated by that statement, we could have easily stayed at 5.0.49 until this was resolved. I really hate to rollback though so we'll have to see how people handle it, it's only been 1 day.

This is with XP server and clients. I've read some stuff here that this issue doesn't happen with Windows 7. Is that rock solid true or just a theory?

Our clients are all about 4 years old and we are considering a big upgrade, we could speed it up if it would resolve this conclusively, but I hate to do that to work around a software problem.

Philipw,

The short answer is yes, my slow rx problems all went away when I upgraded to Windows 7 from XP. I had average 8 year old Windows XP boxes with plenty of memory (at least 1 GB) and they were running Amazing Charts version 5 just fine. When I upgraded to version 6 on the Xp's Amazing charts rx was not usable so I had to roll back. I went out and bought all new machines and now the speed problem with version 6 has gone away. As has been said before, one shouldn't have to upgrade their hardware just because one upgraded from version 5 to 6. But that is the quickest thing to do in order to run version 6. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for AC to fix their slow software issues. They have already said the next version will be version 7, and based on their past release history, I wouldn't expect this till 2012

Here is my opinion on this; and it is just one person's opinion:
1. This problem is far from universal but is by no means "rare". Many people upgrade to 6.09 or 6.010 without any significant slowdown in eRx. Some significant percentage do experience it. That should make it easier to diagnose (as compared to a one-in-a-thousand type of issue) but ONLY if support addresses the issue and collects the appropriate information about the problem.
2. The problem is multi-factorial. For some people it is fixed by disabling software acceleration. For others, upgrading the version of .NET was helpful. Some people got faster by going to Win7, and others fixed the problem with new, more powerful hardware. All new machines with a lot of memory and faster processors will likely fix the problem, but of course then you are doing ALL of the above, and at significant expense.
So there might be people out there who saw the problem go away when they went from XP to 7 and did nothing else, but my bet is that is rare, if it ever occurs.

This is irritating to me for multiple reasons.
1. Tech support should know about this. It was not a rare problem with 6.09 and caused significant consternation. People must have been (and still must be) calling them about it; though perhaps they couldn't get through.
2. As you said, you have not been on the board here; but if SUPPORT had been, they would have known it was a significant issue from reading complaints here.
3. If 6.0.10 is a fix for this problem they should know that, and more importantly they should explicitly share that information, both on the board AND on their official list of "fixes". I have not heard that the problem is fixed with this version; if anyone out there has found that it is, I hope they will speak up. (Note that I am not talking about "I am on 6.0.10 and I don't have the problem"; I am talking about "I had it on 6.09 and it went away with 6.0.10").
4. We are now told that V6.0.10 will be "the last release before V7, Practice Management". This means that you either go to 6.0.10 and hope your eRx is not slow, OR you stay with V5 and forgo MU incentives (or even working on meeting the guidelines) for the forseeable future.

Sorry for the rant, but this is a significant issue that could have been mitigated with communication with the company. Communication that has been lacking.

I don't mean this in a mean way, but when you buy a new car, don't ask the salesman, ask others who have driven the car. (Of course, support doesn't benefit from your moving up -- well maybe less calls)

I wish there were a 5.0.49 version.

Just so we are all on the same page. The issue is mostly about the actual prescription writer and not eRx, correct. I have no issues with eRx, just watching the white box for five to ten seconds, then the beautiful, cascading flow of medications from top to bottom.


I would pay any amount of money to get down to 1 to 2 seconds. I would consider that rather fast.

Jon, you are my hero!

I still find the following problems with version 6.10 eRx:
-- the refill window was basically non functional for 3 days last week, with no response from AC tech support or NewCrop. Only Steven was able to get through to AC and post that there was a problem.
-- the refill indicator on the main window does not reset to the actual refills waiting.
-- if the refill med does not match, and the user clicks "okay" instead of "no match found", the refill is approved, using the first item on the existing med list. It is very easy to make this error. Then the refill is approved for the wrong med. This should not be possible, IMHO.
-- the pharmacy list STILL does not allow search by phone numbers, which has been requested for over a year, and is actually very easy to do directly from the NewCrop windows. So the functionality exists, but AC doesn't incorporate it.
-- even on my fastest computer, once the eRx is sent, the window often hangs for 2-3 seconds, making it impossible to work on any other AC window. This is likely NewCrop syncing the cloud & local med-lists, but is a workflow problem, especially wireless
-- the units problem, why can free Allscripts eRxNOW solve this but AC cannot

I'd better stop here.

Yes I'm kicking myself, it's just the last year or two with AC has been so smooth, we haven't been using the forum. But I have said "I accept full responsibility" a few times tonight, so I'm trying not to pin it on Mr. X in support. My wife is the doc, I'm the IT help.


My mistake, it was 5.0.29.


The chief complaint here is the eRx feature in general.


This has been a point of discussion tonight. It really doesn't look that bad to me anymore. At first it was 5 seconds and that looked comical, but 1-2 seconds just looks slow but usuable. But I have been assured it is a big regression and something that will be hard to live with for even a week.

So when people says "Windows 7 is not a problem" any numbers on that? That is a great hope and I want to make sure it really is good enough. I wish I could try V5 now and time that. Of course it depends on the patient and the number of medicines.

Can you describe a bit about the rollback? Was everything done while you were using V6 restored correctly back to V5?

This is an option for us but our current machines are only 3.5 years old. They were maybe $700 desktops and today I could get similar ones for $450 which are faster but nothing dramatic, seems like shame.

Has anyone upgraded to Windows 7 with the same machines and seen the problem go away, to narrow things down? This is another option although a lot of work, because upgrading from XP to 7 requires a clean install.

I would never install any OS, even on the same machine and the same OS without doing a clean install. Certainly not over a previous version such as XP.

You are correct, it is a lot of work, but there are ways to clone hard drives using the correct software. But, I definitely wouldn't just upgrade to WIN 7 to try to fix the problem. There is no guarantee that it will.

The system upgrade question also leaves unanswered the issue of what system is running on the server. Does Win7 upgrade matter if the issue is with Server 2008 on the server? These discussions all seem to imply that the issue must be on the client machines. Why is this assumed?

I guess because in the same system some computers may have a problem and others do not. This would imply a distal rather than a proximal (server) problem.

So some people have reported slowness with Windows 7?

I agree this is a strong indication. Another indication (but not proof) is other people having performance problems with .NET/Windows Forms applications on XP, i.e. not Amazing Charts.

For example this programmer describes "slow and flickery repainting" and says "It drives me absolutely nuts to see a system with a 3GHz Core 2 and a GeForce 8800 take four seconds to redraw a list view"

This sounds like Amazing Chart's problem. Could possibly be related anyway, no way to say for sure. Anyway he was able to fix the problem by modifying the code, something we can't do.

http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=273

Here's a more generic article about Windows Forms performance, suggesting there are many different things the programmers can do to address performance. None of them simple I'm sure, but just shows it's a general concern with Window Forms.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163630.aspx

Here is an interesting one which does mention the "hardware acceleration" fix. He says one tick ABOVE disabled, something I haven't tried.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...he-datagridview-on-one-of-my-two-screens

None of this is really that helpful. But maybe the lack of a quick-fix by those suffering from this outside AC says something.

Stumbled on this thread looking for "server 2008 issues". As stated above, most of the posts are dealing with xp or 7 on the clients. Anyone running server 2008 as their server? We bumped up to 6.0.9 and I could not even install it on a server 2008 machine. Multiple install errors, crashed to desktop...it was a while back so I don't recall all the details, just know it frustrated the heck out of me. So I have been using one of my better windows 7 machines as the Amazing Charts server up until this week when I went up to 6.0.10. I could install 10 on server 2008 without issue, worked fine after installed with a fake "test" practice, so I created a backup on the win 7 machine and restored from the backup on the server machine. Seemed to be working and much faster looking at imported items etc, but once we started using it this morning, getting multiple errors and crashes when trying to send orders, print orders, or when we try to "print summary" at the end of the visit. Happens on all the clients so figured its a server issue. One error is "user steve can not access meds due to security requirements" and the other error is something like "file 57897858739.dll (I have to try to get the error again, girls didn't write down the exact file name before closing out unfortunately) at cfhc\cfhcserver\program files\amazing charts not found". So to me, it is looking like it is probably a server 2008 issue. I was wondering if anyone here is successfully running version 10 on server 2008. If so, then I figure it is probably something I can fix on my end, security issue or something to do with restoring a backup made on a win 7 machine to a server 2008 machine or such. I just don't want to waste my time working on it however if it is an amazing charts issue and NOONE has it working on a server 2008 environment. Sorry such a long post, it's been a long night, I ramble after this much caffiene...and forget how to punctuate and spell.

AC support logged on remotely to address speed issues. They adjusted the hardware accelleration and told us to adjust it on all clients. They said get more memory for the server, our is just a desktop running XP pro with 3GB RAM.

I never spoke to them and wasn't there at the time, so I might have missed something. I wish they'd followup with an email summarizing what they know about the problem and their recommended fixes. But from what I saw it's disabling hardware acceleration and beefing up the server.

We've gone 1.5 days since the changes and reports are the speed is bad but tolerable. I was watching the doctor running AC and I see how it slows her down even at 1-2 seconds for screen updates.


I ordered one WIN7 laptop for us to try. It it totally fixes the problem I will try updating some other machine to WIN7. That will be a good test of new hardware and new OS vs. new OS only. Ideally we don't have to replace all our machines, we have 5 laptops and 4 desktops and 1 server.