What's the Fastest RAM that I Can Add?

[JorgeA]

Creating the hidden partition was a bit frightening, since as it updated you on progress it reported that the D: (recovery) partition was being "moved." (Why would it have to move that partition? Couldn't it just work around it -- there was plenty of space on the physical disk.) But anyway, the process concluded and I installed a downloaded trial version of MS Office 2007, then watched it install...

... Everything appears to have gone back to the way it was before. The HDD has regained its full size. The only difference is that the apparent space used on my C: drive has gone down from ~137GB to about 77GB -- yet, nothing seems to be missing, either data or applications! What might account for that?

All normal what you saw there; as I remember you can manually select the partition to shrink IF there is enough space, so, in this case the program did it for you and decided that D was too full so it was better to move D and shrink C, or you picked C to use its space to make that recovery partition, one of both.

puntoMX,

Hmm, let me see if I can remember what I did...

I told BlackArmor to use the C: partition as the source for the new hidden partition. That was 465GB before the operation was performed, and with the 50GB Secure Zone hidden partition it went down to 415GB. The used space was still 137GB or so.

Then afterward, I used the BlackArmor process to remove the hidden 50GB partition, and then the C: drive went back up to 465GB.

Thinking about what you wrote, I remember that in the interim I did uninstall a 30-day trial version of Adobe Acrobat (nice program, but way too expensive for what I need it to do). No doubt that removing it accounts for some of the difference. Acrobat, though, doesn't take up 60GB, even after the installation file is decompressed... or does it?

Anyway, I'd say that the bottom line is that nothing has (apparently) been lost, yet somehow I reclaimed a ton of real estate on the HDD. Maybe I should install and uninstall that Secure Zone on a regular basis as part of HDD maintenance!

--JorgeA

P.S. I also noticed that the 11GB D: recovery partition, which Explorer had regularly reported as having ~1.04GB free, now has 1.42GB free. How about that.

Edited December 13, 2010 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Hi BlouBul,

Great to hear from you again!

We still have the two radical options (uninstalling and reinstalling Word on the HDD, or installing a new HDD to put Word on it fresh). But over the weekend a new idea occurred to me.

Back in August I bought a 2.0GHz Pentium 4 refurbished computer running Windows XP for use in a distributed computing project. It's a "lean and mean" machine that doesn't have a lot of stuff crammed into it. No Office, no Norton, no Spybot -- hardly anything except for the OS and the DC software. (It does have Avast 5 and SuperAntiSpyware installed.) I installed XP Professional on it myself with the accompanying CD.

It hit me that putting Word 2007 on this computer might be worth a try, so I took that trial version of Office, installed it, and then copied the original offending file for a test. I'd actually thought of it before, but I wasn't sure that the system would be comparable enough for our series of tests. But now that we're considering more radical measures, it occurred to me that this might be a good time to try it.

Three loadings took 3:52, 3:43, and 3:43.

This was a fresh Word installation on a clean machine. So it looks pretty clear that -- unless Windows XP on a Pentium 4 is not a suitable comparator, or unless Avast + SAS are as much of a system burden as Norton -- then whatever our problem is, it has to do with Word 2007 itself, and not with corruption of Word or with the presence of other software.

Just as a sanity check, I re-ran the same .DOC file on my Vista laptop's Microsoft Works. The loading times were 1:15, 1:12, and 1:10. Even as a .DOC file, which isn't Works's favorite format, it loads faster than Word 2007 on any system I've tried.

Enjoy your holiday, BlouBul, we can pick this back up when you come back! Those of us who live halfway to the Pole on the other hemisphere tend to forget that there are warm and sunny spots on the globe this time of the year.

--JorgeA

[BlouBul]

What about uninstalling Word 2007 and installing Word 2000 on that machine? That might be an interesting experiment since the opening times is about the same as your other pc. That will also tell you if anything serious will go wrong. What size hdd does that machine have?

Thanks I will enjoy my holiday, but will still try to pop in for a couple of minutes when I get a chance to see if we can cook up something to solve your problem (I can't relax if there are still unsolved problems)

[JorgeA]

What about uninstalling Word 2007 and installing Word 2000 on that machine? That might be an interesting experiment since the opening times is about the same as your other pc. That will also tell you if anything serious will go wrong. What size hdd does that machine have?

Hi BlouBul,

OK, I will try that. There's (literally) nothing to lose!!

The HDD on that machine is all of 40GB.

(I can't relax if there are still unsolved problems)

I can relate to that!

Thank you for hanging in there with me.

--JorgeA

[BlouBul]

OK, I will try that. There's (literally) nothing to lose!!

The HDD on that machine is all of 40GB.

If that computer is connected to the internet, you can try to setup your outlook account by copying the account settings in your other computer. That will also help to show you that it is not really that difficult

The hdd is unfortunately too small to test the image, but big enough to do quite a few useful tests (you can always image and restore that drive to practice)

I can relate to that!

Now let's fix it that I can start relaxing

Edited December 14, 2010 by BlouBul

[JorgeA]

Hi BlouBul,

Today turned out to be a hectic workday, and the next couple of days are shaping up as busy ones, too. So we will probably have to wait till Friday before we can start relaxing!

--JorgeA

[BlouBul]

No Prob, See you then (and good luck with the end-of-the-year-rush)

[JorgeA]

No Prob, See you then (and good luck with the end-of-the-year-rush)

Hi BlouBul,

Still in the crunch, but it's been stressful enough that I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep. So I spent a little bit of the "additional" time searching the Web for this issue.

Most of the diagnoses and solutions are either stuff that we've already tried, or which don't apply in our case. But here's the most interesting link I found, comparing the performance of the various editions of MS Word.

I suspect that the answer to our mystery is to be found somewhere on those charts.

--JorgeA

[BlouBul]

Very interesting. The opening document in warm start takes 5x the time in 2007 than in 2000! If we take our times it is about 7x (30sec vs 210sec). I still think there is now real functionality that will be lost if you run Office 2007 with Word 2000

[JorgeA]

Very interesting. The opening document in warm start takes 5x the time in 2007 than in 2000! If we take our times it is about 7x (30sec vs 210sec). I still think there is now real functionality that will be lost if you run Office 2007 with Word 2000

BlouBul,

Agreed! For example, I do like the feature where you can select a chunk of text, and see on the full screen what it would look like if you changed the font or the type size.

I'd still like to know (if possible) what accounts for the difference. For document loading, the writer says that, "Word 2007 introduced the compressed .docx format which was smaller on the disk (so less disk I/O), but uncompressing and parsing XML requires much more CPU time."

I wonder if some sort of behind-the-scenes XML processing might be the source of all our troubles, since AFAIK it wasn't a part of Office 2000. FWIW, I should note that the original 7MB document is in .DOC format, but that saving it as a .DOCX file, despite decreasing the size to 6MB, didn't seem to have a dramatic effect on the loading time.

--JorgeA

[BlouBul]

I'd still like to know (if possible) what accounts for the difference. For document loading, the writer says that, "Word 2007 introduced the compressed .docx format which was smaller on the disk (so less disk I/O), but uncompressing and parsing XML requires much more CPU time."

I wonder if some sort of behind-the-scenes XML processing might be the source of all our troubles, since AFAIK it wasn't a part of Office 2000. FWIW, I should note that the original 7MB document is in .DOC format, but that saving it as a .DOCX file, despite decreasing the size to 6MB, didn't seem to have a dramatic effect on the loading time.

Since our tests in the previous thread showed hardly any difference in the opening times between the two formats, I do not think that got anything to do with it. I think it is more an intrinsic property in the way the different versions of Word opens a file. We will confirm that when we open the open the .doc file in Word 2000. If you want to, you can also open the .docx file in Word 2000 (with a suitable converter plugin), but I do not think there will be a significent difference.

[JorgeA]

Hi BlouBul,

Finally back in the action here! I had to work through midnight on Sunday, but I got the project done and now I can have some fun.

In our case, "fun" means that I got the chance, at long last, to uninstall Word 2007 from the Windows XP computer, and put Word 2000 on it in order to compare the file loading times. I ran a 5-test series with the same offending file, and here are the results, in seconds:

17 !

14 !!

18

17

14

Can you believe it?! It looks like this really clinches it: whatever the holdup is, it has to do with Word/Office 2007, as last week's benchmark webpage said.

So as I see it, there are two choices for speeding up the file loading process:

1. Use Word 2000 instead of 2007; or
   
2. Upgrade the hardware. I suspect that it's mainly CPU processing involved (right?), so that would mean getting a faster CPU, of the kind that CoffeeFiend recommended way back when at the start of this thread.
   

What do you think?

And of course, we always have Choice (3) not to do anything...

I hope you & family are having a good time on a warm beach!

--JorgeA

[BlouBul]

Hi JorgeA,

Just got home now. Only a week at the sunny coasts this year . Have to go to a family gathering inland during the Christmas period

I do not think faster hardware will come close to the Word 2000 times. So option 2 is not really an option to solve this problem. I suspect there is something intrinsically in Word 2007 that clashes with your type of files. I wonder if Word 2010 will be better? Maybe you can download a trial and sees if it is. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/try/try-office-2010-FX101868838.aspx?WT.mc_id=mscom_enus_bnr_tryq2

Otherwise, stick with Clippy

[dencorso]

I second BlouBul's advice.

[JorgeA]

Hi JorgeA,

Just got home now. Only a week at the sunny coasts this year . Have to go to a family gathering inland during the Christmas period

I do not think faster hardware will come close to the Word 2000 times. So option 2 is not really an option to solve this problem. I suspect there is something intrinsically in Word 2007 that clashes with your type of files. I wonder if Word 2010 will be better? Maybe you can download a trial and sees if it is. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/try/try-office-2010-FX101868838.aspx?WT.mc_id=mscom_enus_bnr_tryq2

Otherwise, stick with Clippy

Hi BlouBul,

I'll see if it's possible to install the 2010 trial download on that XP machine, so we can compare. Thanks for the link. I'll let you know what happens.

Welcome back! I can relate to what you say about Christmas family gatherings...

Well, it looks like we've come up with a solid diagnosis and prescription for this problem. Thank you very much for sticking with me all this time -- there's no way I could have done it without your help.

Gratefully,

--JorgeA