Step by step guide to sorting out one teachers slow document access

[speckytecky]

We have one teacher (teaches maths and ICT) who frequently complains that his access to his documents is slow. Most of his Office documents open with Smart's Notebook embedded.

 

I have carried out various actions on his teacher workstation - run Delprof2, defragmenter, scandisked, file cleanup, speed tested network connection but he continues to complain that the 64 bit 4GB RAM Windows 7 workstation is slow. I've tested it with him there and to me the documents seem to open, admittedly not instantly but in reasonable time.

 

Any step by step suggestions what to try next please?

[Steve21]

Disable Smart Addins (Ink) within Word (Yes even if it's embedded) and test it.

 

If it opens fast then, walk away and deny knowledge of useless Smart products slowing office down

 

Smart addins seem to kill Office speed so much we've disabled them on all machines by default unless someone re-activates them and then it's their choice. (Think it's more the old version of Smart 11 with newer Office)

 

Steve

[FragglePete]

Stick a SSD in the machine - instant speed boost!

 

Pete

[speckytecky]

I'd love to do that Pete unfortunately we are approaching Academy status and I have zero input on purchasing currently - Nuff said! Can't say life is a bowl of cherries nowadays.

 

Stick a SSD in the machine - instant speed boost!

 

Pete

[psydii]

Use procmon to see what is going on.

 

Or go deep with WPA set up circular logging and when they report it again, you have access to everything the machine was doing.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/jeff_stokes/2011/07/07/how-to-collect-a-netmon-3-4-and-xperf-kernel-trace-and-stop-when-a-problem-occurs/

 

(Incidentally, the author of that blog is /was a member of this parish)

[SpuffMonkey]

Do you suspect a bit of "exaggeration"? We used to have terrible trouble with one teacher who swore blind that everything ran slow and took "minutes to open" - in the end I had to do screen caps of everything working fine to prove to SMT that it was all working as it should! When he left, calls to the Helpdesk reduced by nearly 50% (not an exaggeration!)

[speckytecky]

Oh yea you are so spot on @SpuffMonkey this teacher and the member of the SMT who is also batting for him have until recently been my most high demand staff!

Do you suspect a bit of "exaggeration"? We used to have terrible trouble with one teacher who swore blind that everything ran slow and took "minutes to open" - in the end I had to do screen caps of everything working fine to prove to SMT that it was all working as it should! When he left, calls to the Helpdesk reduced by nearly 50% (not an exaggeration!)