Home Forums Discussions Problems Help! Speed issues with version 6

I've tried looking through the forums for help, but all I keep getting is complaints, and no solutions.. I recently upgraded to version 6, from 5.0.29, I believe. Main system is on windows server 2008, no issues. In version 5 the pharmacy list and eRX would take 5sec max, maybe 10 if you just typed in a state w nothing else in the pharmacy listing. Now since upgrading the time has gone to 2 - 5 minutes one time to pull up the list. This is causing us to have to use google to find pharmacies, and staff staying after hours to update the pharmacies due to the long software wait time.

Is there a solution!!! I just paid for the tech support upgrade, now I feel like it was a waste of money. I do not want to go out and buy 5 new desktop clients, that's ridiculous and sorry, stupid to do just for a software upgrade.


Pleeeeeease help!

Ive tried hardware acceleration, didn't do enough.

Can we get a sticky post, listing all the different options short of having to buy a new pc to solve this.

If I just upgrade the same xp machine to win7, will that fix it?

Perhaps a partial refund from amazing charts so we can upgrade ours pc's ..

So now how long is it taking to pull up the main eRX screen?

Yours really was taking 2-5 minutes before!? That almost sounds like a different problem from the "drawing" slowness we are seeing.

XP to 7 requires a clean install, it does not upgrade in place preserving your applications, you have to reinstall everything.

That said, I've not heard of anyone seeing the slowness on WIN7 and have heard several people who switched to new WIN7 machine and it fixed the slowness. But that does not differentiate between the new machine and WIN7. I have not specifically heard of people upgrading their old machine to WIN7 and whether that fixes the problem. Someone has said "WIN7 may not fix the problem" but I'm not sure what they were basing that on.

I'm getting a new WIN7 laptop friday and separately a copy of WIN7 Pro. I'm hoping to be able to compare 3 things:
1) Old laptop with XP
2) Old laptop with WIN7
3) New laptop with WIN7

Didn't Bert post a video for a Windows 7 machine with ridiculous specs? It was still 3 seconds to load at least.

What is your load time now after the hardware acceleration fix? I know you stated 2-5 minutes before. Is like 3 to 10 seconds now?

Check this out: http://sluthra.x10.bz/v6_tut.html

Just checked. Already had most of the options in Windows XP set to best performance. I changed the font rendering as you have on the site, maybe 5 seconds faster.. For sure it improved basic windows load time, hah. The only other thing in the background is the Fujitsu Scan Snap & Google Talk (on that pc) - 2gigs of Ram, Pentium 4 w HT.

Luckily the other 3 computers aren't being used by anyone who needs to access pharmacy lists or eRX. My desktop is a Dell, quad-processor with Windows 7, pharmacies are only 2 seconds on mine, same w eRX, pulling charts is slower though.

Really annoying since Version 5 didn't have any of these issues.

My next step is a clean upgrade to Win 7 either tonight or tomorrow. I'll update on any improvement, since its the exact same hardware.

It was the drawing problem. We sit there and watch the table being drawn up, fun fun.

I'm going to try Win 7 with a clean install and no hardware change, I'll update the progress.

We have several new desktop PC in our office with Windows 7 Pro and the prescription writer function is no better than the Windows XP Pro machines. Server is Dell T300 with SBS 2003. I eliminated the hardware acceleration and got pretty good results in version 6.0.9 but version 6.1.0 is even slower. The last version 5 prior to version 6 worked great. Of course, we upgraded for the Meaningless Use which has added a lot more time to our workday.

I agree with Ted. I don't think you will see any performance increase. The only way this is going to get better is when AC goes away from this version of Crystal Reports so they can change their code.

It was more like 8.2 seconds. Here is the video again.

http://www.box.net/shared/static/gdv13abrv45synmx5fmz.avi

Certainly, upgrading your computer will speed anything up. I have to say that it is usually not this slow, but realize that this is a computer which costs over $2500, has the fastest hard drive you can buy, an incredibly good motherboard, a video card that scores 7.9 on both WEI scores, 8GB of RAM running in dual channel mode and an i7 2600k processor. And, you can still get this. And, oh yes, it is WIN 7 Pro.

That's ridiculous.

You can run any computer game on it at top speed, but amazing charts had a delay, wow.

I didn't think AC was more complex than any computer game..


This excuse the ignorant question, but why do we need Crystal Reports again? What functionality is that for in AC?

Can't you just use the old Transact SQL, or create a COM object to run stats faster? I use to be a programmer in College, but I always preferred writing in a lower level language for speed and efficiency vs. using a higher level, easier and slower one. I view Crystal Reports as a third party high level language. Isn't it?

I have no idea what it is for either other than gathering information. What info would that be? How would it be used?

See this is the type of thing where it would be helpful if AC came on the board and said Crystal Reports, etc. and we are working on it. I heard that the code had to be changed due to a new version of Crystal Reports, but I am not certain of this.

Please do not upgrade an XP computer to Win7!!!! Windows XP is the most amazing software for its time. It can run on only 256mb.

Windows 7 needs min 1GB (I would never go lower than 2GB). So most likely your computer can not support it anyways.

That being said windows 7 the way to go, but you will have to buy new computers. Very nice ones from dell outlet - i3, 3GB, 7200RPM hard drive for $400.

I agree with @Age Management, don't upgrade from XP to Win 7. Much better to just buy new Win 7 boxes. The old computers can be sold - I sold mine to employees at fire sale prices ($50 with monitor, they were probably worth $100 at least). The employees appreciated the deal - I didn't push it on them - when they heard I was getting new computers they begged for the old ones. Your computers probably worth more than my 8 year old pentium 4 boxes.

@HMWLCMD, just to echo what has been said many times, the problem is not your hardware, it is Version 6 and crystal reports. If I weren't trying to go for the Meaningful use in 2011, I would have just stayed with version 5.

A dumb comment, with version 6 do you have all the users set their preference as empty deleted folder when you log off. We didn't realize this and it helped when everyone cleaned out their folder. Also If you have not reindexed then stopped and started the SQL server if you have one this also made a big difference for us.

I have AC runnig of a windows 2003 SBS , with 8 work stations
and a combination of win7 & win XP pro.
I have not experienced any speed problems or prescription problems with v 5.029 & after upgrading to Version 6.10.
The crystal reports are the summaries that show up when you print summaries of pt visits for meaningful use and other reports that you run in amazing charts.

After all of the posts on the speed issues with v6, it is fairly evident that it seems to have little to do with one's hardware. It seems hit or miss. And, Crystal Reports is likely an issue.

So is it your belief there is no correlation between operating system versions and this V6 slowness problem?

Thanks everyone for all the help. I'm going to attempt the win 7 install today and see if there is ANY difference. If it doesn't help at all, which I really don't believe it will, I'll just have to buy a new PC. I wish I could bill AC or Crystal Reports for it, but oh well.......

With a little more time dedicated to developing a COM object, you can completely remove the need for Crystal Reports; in my opinion!

Bert, it does seem hit or miss with OS. I wonder if there are any background operations on the PC's that run it fast, any third party apps (i.e. AVG), what exact win XP version they are on, sp3, media center.. etc. Intel or AMD chips? Maybe a benchmark comparison software to analyze??

HM,

You are adding much to the discussion and have interesting things to say. Would you mind making a signature with your first name? It's hard to address you with your nick.

I don't think you can trace it. My weakest computer, a five year old machine with 1GB of RAM using an AMD Athlon Dual Core 3800+ and a Seagate 7200 rpm hard drive on Win XP is nearly instantaneous. So 1GB vs 8, The AMD processor vs my Intel i7s, the Seagate vs 240GB SSD drives, and WIN 7 Pro, and it is two to three times faster on average.

I have pretty good information that it is not Crystal Reports that is the issue. It is the fact that the code had to be changed to accommodate the new Crystal Reports.

What I wish I knew, and it sounds like you would know, is the Crystal Reports necessary? Is it being used for MU to track data? I can't recall if it was in 5.0.29. It seems like it would have been if code had to be changed.

Most software companies or especially those that come out with huge products such as an OS or an Office Suite with list what it is compatible with. I am sure AC has a fairly decent lab for testing and would have XP and Vista and Win 7, etc. with all sorts of combinations of hardware and software. I certainly hope they are using two prototypes such as XP Pro and Win 7 Pro and not adding anything and simply only changing the resolution.

Then again, it's not like they can say, "Let's try adding Adobe here and Firefox there."


AMD Dual Core 3800+

Thanks Kirk.

We received the new laptop and I compared these two machines:
old - Vostro 1500 Core 2 Duo 1.4Ghz 2GB XP
new - Vostro 3550 i5 2.3GHz 4GB WIN7

I didn't see any obvious difference in speed between the two. I see 1-3 seconds to pull up the eRX screen in both cases, where you can see the controls slowly draw.

I did see a 15 second draw one time only with the old machine, and haven't seen the same with the new machine. But that was the first attempt of the day and it's unclear if that is a real client difference.

So I was dissapointed enough with this first test that I haven't bothered to install WIN7 on one of the old machines, doesn't seem likely to work if the new machine with WIN7 isn't faster.

Sorry to hear that Philip. It is sad that we users have to experiment with better computers to see if it is better. As I said in another post, my XP Pro which is five years old on 1GB of memory and a Pentium 4 processor and an old hard drive brings it up in less than one second.

I think it is obvious that no one knows what combination of hardware is going to help, and it is likely simply AC's code. If I were going to pick hardware to have a "chance" at improvement, I would go with a faster video card, but even that is a gamble. The best bet is to upgrade only if you want to upgrade for other reasons.

The irony is there seems to be a split between those who like the fact that the prescription window automatically closed out after a script is sent. In the past, it stayed. I have many more times that I need to send a different script, and I had no issue closing out of the window manually. But, the irony mentioned is that you now have to go through the same redraw. This is where an option comes in.

Please tell me where I am wrong, but it is features (that may even be helpful) like these that are put in due to AC thinking they are helpful when they weren't even requested, rather than adding some of the 81+ requests.

Upgraded the machine to Windows 7, clean install, with no other hype, just AC.

Although the entire machine is slower now, pulling pharmacies and eRX is faster. Of course this is just with AC running, no other applications, and I turned off a lot of windows running services. -- I think I have to go buy a new PC now, just to handle AC.. fun fun.

I haven't done any hard programming for years now, but I do believe the problem is Crystal Reports. With the amount of data in the tables, coding SQL statements will take programmers a lot longer to do. SQL is database specific and the dialect can be tricky, but the speed increase will be substantial.. I have built a reporting COM object, back in the day, for generating reports and creating data views based on user selection, and never ran into speed issues. ( I don't claim to be an expert, and have been out of developing for years, fyi. ) Maybe AC doesn't have a DB developer?

-- I do agree that more emphasis needs to be made on what AC does right now, i.e. fixing bugs, speed, and making it more solid vs. the fast push to get a PM out..

"Jack of all trades, but a master of none", will be AC's fate..

just my 2 cents..

My problem with slowness began before updating to 6.0. Tech support has been persistent and tried multiple things. Crystal reports upgrade did nothing. Signing off a year's worth of orders (oops, the staff did them and never hit completed!) did nothing at improving speed. Upgrading to 6.0.10, little change. Most recently, they went in and deleted all old emails (something about they were still stored, in an attempt to be more like Outlook, even though we had deleted them). This did improve us a little. I have a fast server w/ windows 7 pro; the server is not the issue. The AC team put my program on their computers and agree it is the AC, not our server. Wish I were a programmer to figure this one out.

I am still having extreme slowness in opening Imported items, worse on W7 machines. I am still on V 5.029

Just for a quick test, I would install V5.0.29 or V 6.10 on a stand alone machine as the main computer & restore one of your backup files(.enc)& check if you experience any slowing.
I still suspect it is all the bloatware like Imported items,and other files that are causing the slowness.
If it works fine , then you know it is either the itemes added to AC or your network set up that is the problem.
I remember this discussion more than a year ago about Imported items.
I do not import to AC but keep it in a file outside AC
& access it via the network as a mapped file.
All faxes, consults, radiology reports are also kept outside AC
Let us know how it works
Grenville

Grenville,

Really sounds like you would benefit from FAP if you are solo.

Our imported items are also slowing down on 5.029 if a patient has a large number. Old records etc. Go to a file outside AC, but labs, etc Have no place else to go if they are imported directly. Patients getting frequent inr's can take 30 seconds, and we are only 18 months into this. What do younold-timers find?

This issue is really hitting me too. Imported items loads ok but sometimes when I am entering orders it just takes 3 or 4 minutes to come up. It seems to be Crystal Reports. I am about ready to start handwriting orders and giving the form to the front desk to enter into AC.

We really notice a slow down depending on the number of computers on line. I am going to sink some money into a managed switch and reconfigure the network some.

Grenville,

No offense and I appreciate your ideas but, honestly, I should not HAVE to go through with what you recommend. AC should be aware of this, we certainly have told them enough times on the boards if not elsewhere. These are new computers. God help us when the PM comes out.

That is kind of like saying that my problem with Microsoft Office is all of the bloatware like Excel and PowerPoint. Imported Items is an integral part of AC. It should not degrade your ability to use the rest of the program.

I agree with you that you or anyone else using AC should not have to put up with this slowing of AC.
I empathize with those that are having problems.
The only reason I suggested it because I have used AC V5.0.29 & upgraded to AC 6.10 and have absolutelty no problems with slowing or with Erx.
To me it does not sound logical to blame computers as you said you have new computers. I have 3 year old DELL VOSTRO dekstops with 1 GB ram, 2 laptops with 2 gb ram ram each & a 2003 SBS server with 8 gb ram.
So I wonder how come there is no slowing of AC. I feel no need to upgrade as they are serving me well at the present moment
As for PM , I dont need it as I am outsourcing my billing
The only annoying thing with the upgrade to V6.10 is the script writer closes after each written script.
I dont believe AC software is that smart to selecetively hit & miss certain computers. If it was Crystal reports or any part of AC causing the slow down it should hit every computer that installs AC
In any case I hope the AC staff paying attention to these complaints
Grenville

I have to put my 2 cents worth in here. We have a Dell Studio with 8 GB and an I-7 processor on Win 7 Ultimate and running 20 work stations on it, all running Win 7, some just a plain old dual-core pentium, and have NO slowdown what-so-ever. We have been using AC for over 5 years and have over 4000 patients and use imported items exclusively for input (over 50 GB of data in Imported Items). 3 Full-time providers, 1 nurse, 1 tech, 2 front desk and 1 biller.

I can see all your frustrations, but can offer no rhyme or reason to what is causing it. We all have different setups, some work, some don't.

I can't wait to hear the outcome of this when someone can figure it all out.

Brian

It's not that AC is smart enough to hit or miss certain computers. Yes, it should hit every computer, but it doesn't. It has nothing to do with AC's intelligence, it has to do with the developer's. This issue is like Influenza A. It hits young people, old people, sick people and well people alike.

I won't go through my computer specs again, but when it redraws on this one (and nothing should redraw on this one), but it doesn't on my 1GB 5 year old computer, there is something wrong with the software.

I have it on some authority that Crystal Reports doesn't cause it, but that the code was changed to accommodate it.

This version should have never been released even if it did it on ONE computer in their lab. And, AC should be addressing the problem and explaining what they think it is being caused from and what they intend to do about it. My feeling is that they are focusing 100% on the PM.

And, yes, the script write closing automatically is a pain. Some like it though. Should be a preference.

What if they make a connection to a third party, surescripts or whoever provides all the online info, when the eRX screen is loading.

Once ours took 14 seconds on first load, when it normally takes 1-3 seconds. And what could cause such a long and variable delay, since we believe it's not our client or server. Connecting to remote servers on the internet sometimes takes a long time.

If that were true the mistake is to intermingle the drawing the controls with networking. Ideally the screen would come up instantly using only locally available information, with second stage "loading..." indicators for information that required the network connection.

This is just a theory. A flawed theory since it doesn't explain how some users see no delays at all.

Unplug your Ethernet cable and see what happens.

Imported Items. Leslie, what formats are you importing. I had this issue a long time ago, and it seems to be the format and file size that gives the most issues. My machines are NOT crazy fast, but I use a Fujitsu scanner, and it's set to 4? I believe out of 5 for speed, and scan to PDF. We have at minimum 5-10 pages per pt & at max 30-40 (prior records). CRASHING has improved through the versions, Adobe is a HUGE issue by itself, we just upgraded to X, and it's a lot slower than version 9 was. Are you scanning at High Res??


Brian at CCFM. .. I would love to be in the position to trash our pc's and get faster ones in order to run AC..

Bert, ok so if it REALLY isn't Crystal Reports, I still think CR contributes to slow speeds.. then what is it that's slowing it down? I know you have "connections", fill me in!

I totally agree with your developer comment. AC should be FIXed and bug free, priority 1.. then a PM.

pdf, Word, Excel. Not a problem previously. Seems worse on the W7 computers.