Extremely slow start-up.

[brian.r.hamilton]

TopoFusion 2.1 is taking ~5 minutes to start-up on my machine.  The startup screen pops up right away and displays "Loading..." in the status area.  While waiting for TopoFusion to start, CPU usage is at 50%.  Once TopoFusion is finally running, it seems to function normally.

I'm running a dual PIII 800 MHz Windows XP Pro machine with 512 M.  I believe this started happening with version 2.0.  
I don't have any tracks loaded (all Removed).  I've tried changing the Default Tracks Directory to simply "My Documents", where I have no GPX files, to see if this would help, but it did not.  I've also tried changing the Tile memory from 50% to 10%, but this also made no difference at all.  I've also tried disabling firewalls, anti-virus, etc.  Nothing seems to make a difference.

What is being loaded and why is it taking so long to start?

[Krein]

My first guess would be that something is going wrong with your DEMs or the DEM index file.  Have you been using any DEMs with TF?

If that is not it (try changing the directory), then try renaming TopoFusion.ini to TopoFusion.ini.back.  That should go back to default values and will tell us if there is something wrong with the program or settings.

[brian.r.hamilton]

Yes, I was using some DEM files about the time the problem started now that you bring it up.  They all seemed to work fine at the time.  I have 8 DEM files ~50-120 MB each.  I tried changing the DEM Directory and no change.  So TopoFusion is still finding the DEMs or this isn't the problem.  Can I just delete the DEM index file?

[brian.r.hamilton]

I moved all the DEM files and DEM index file.  No change at all.

I renamed the INI file and it started right up!  I believe the last 2 times I updated TopoFusion, I did not delete the INI file.  Perhaps there is some setting between the upgrades that caused a problem.  I'm glad there isn't really anything in there that matters to me very much.

I can send you the old INI file if you are interested.

Thanks for the tips.

[brian.r.hamilton]

Not quite yet.  I switched the map directory and it is slow again.  It must have something to do with the map index or map files.  If I delete the map index, will I lose access to all the map files?  There are (7) 625 M map DAT files.

[brian.r.hamilton]

I deleted the map index file and it started fine but it seems to be reloading all the map data.  No new map DAT files were created but files 1-6 were modified.  File 0 was unchanged.  I noticed errors on the displayed map as well.  There was an aerial photo tile in my topo map view.  Would this indicate that the 0 DAT file is corrupt?  I'll try just deleting that file and see what happens.

[Krein]

It shouldn't be a problem with that many maps.  I have 11 maps.dat files and my startup is still fairly smooth.  How large is your mapindex.dat file?  That file does get loaded completely in, and if it is huge for some reason (larger than it should be) it could be the problem.  There is also some sorting going on that might be running each time when it shouldn't be (if mapindex got corrupted somehow).

Those are my best guesses as of now.  Deleting maps0 (or mapindex) probably isn't a good idea.  Without the index file to go with the maps I'm not sure what would happen.

[brian.r.hamilton]

My MapIndex.dat file was 7.67 MB and Maps0.dat was 625 MB (same size as the rest of the Maps#.dat files).

Yesterday I deleted both the MapIndex.dat file and Maps0.dat file and now it starts normally using the maps data path with all my other Maps#.dat files.  TopoFusion created a new Maps0.dat file that is slowly growing in size.  I don't know if TopoFusion is using the other Maps#.dat files, but they have not been written since I deleted the other 2 files.  Maybe it writes to each Maps#.dat file in order until it reaches a max size, then starts a new one?  If this is true, am I going to be in trouble once the current Maps0.dat file is "full"?

I still have the previous MapsIndex.dat and Maps0.dat file in my Recycle Bin.  It would be a shame to lose all the map data I have.  It seems obvious that the problem was related to either the MapsIndex.dat file or Maps0.dat file or both.

Did I mention that the Maps0.dat file had a date that was 8 months old while all the others had a current date?  Any idea what the problem is and how to avoid it in the future?  What's going to happen when my new Maps0.dat file gets "full"?

[Krein]

7 mb for the index file doesn't sound wrong.  You are right that it fills maps0 maps1 ... etc in order, so if you delete the mapindex file you will lose all your maps.  '>

There may be something we can do to fix your index file, which sounds like the problem.  I'm waiting to hear back from the other author (who wrote that code) about the sorting and what could possibly be wrong.  We might have you send us the index file.  Standby.

[Krein]

It does sort the index file on startup... but, unless you had just downloaded maps for an extended period (a sudden increase) you shouldn't see a sudden slowdown in the startup time.

Also, what speed is your CPU?  Quicksort is really fast, even on our older systems...

[brian.r.hamilton]

I'd be happy to send you my index file.

The slowdown started way back at some point around when version 2.0 was released.  I don't remember if it was exactly after I upgraded to 2.0.  I didn't give it much thought because I wasn't using TopoFusion as much at the time and I thought that if it was a bug in TF, it would be resolved quickly.  I was also having troubles with TF and Norton Security at the time, so I thought that may have been an issue too.  I believe that I was also downloading large sections of map data using the Load Map Data tool around that same timeframe.

My machine is a dual CPU 800 MHz PIII w/512 MB RAM and 4 drive SCSI (RAID 0) disc array.

PS.  When I said it was taking 5 minutes to start, I meant that literally.  I timed it quite a few times as I tried various things and the time was very consistent.

[Krein]

Ok, let me have a look at the index file.  Zip and send to smorris@topofusion.com

Even without your maps.dat files I should be able to test how long it takes to load up and sort that index file.  And debug if takes long on mine.

Thanks...