Very slow outlook 2003 sync, system stalling

[SacramentoRob]

hi folks,

I'm having lots of stalling and disconnects when Plaxo is trying to sync. The problem comes up whenever I make a change to my contacts. The system starts to sync and my computer just stalls. After a few minutes (!) it starts running again.

Does anyone know a way to work around this?

I'm using Outlook 2003 and Windows 2K Pro. I have a t1 internet connection. I use firefox. I've tried turning off my firewall reducing the amount of data that is being synced to no avail.

Any advice is appreciated.

/Rob

[bryan]

Hmm, that's odd - do you see a login screen every time you sync? If so, then it means your initial sync did not succeed so it's basically starting over and doing a slow sync each time.

If that's not the issue then the sync should be very fast if just one contact changes. You could try disabling sync for any very large folders (maybe Calendar). You can control this in Plaxo, Advanced, Synchronization Manager.

[SacramentoRob]

Thanks for getting back to me. I'll try turning off the contact syncing and report back. I have 7000 contacts so that could be it.

When I do a manual sync, I get the same problem. The "Sync preparation" window sits in the foreground at 13% and I can't do anything else on my computer. It takes a couple of minutes, then the sync completes and everything is fine again.

Thanks again

[SacramentoRob]

I've tracked my stalling problem down to Plaxo sync. When I shut off the automatic sync, my system works fine. When I then click the sync button, my cpu usage goes to 99% and stays there for several minutes. The plaxo sync bar says "Preparing to Synchronize" and shows 13% for several minutes. Then the sync happens in just a few moments. After this, the cpu stays at 99% for another few minutes until it finally gets back to normal.
I tried a re-sync and that didn't help--in fact, the re-sync took about as long as the problem I'm having.
I'm running Plaxo 3.8.0.64 on an Asus p5dgc-v delux, 2.8Ghz processor with 1Gb ram, full Outlook 2003.

Anything I should try?

Thanks,
/Rob

[bryan]

Responded offline...

[dpakman]

Bryan,

Would you mind posting your response here as well, instead of just offline? Since upgrading to Plaxo 3, it is completely unusable for me as the sync times are way too long. I have 4500 contacts and lots of calendar items. The initial sync takes at least 25 minutes and Outlook completely locks up anytime a change is made to a contact or calendar for at least 10 - 45 seconds, making it useless. I have removed Plaxo toolbar from outlook and everything returns to normal.

Is there a work-around? Otherwise plaxo is unusable at this point.

David

[Graham Leach (Premium)]

Welcome back to "DLL HELL"

Quick workaround:

Tools | Options | Other | Advanced Options | COM Add-Ins

UNCHECK "Plaxo" which will disable the following poorly behaved Dynamic Linked Library file:

plx_out.dll

Then get onto PLAXO support to start writing their add-ins correctly, with proper synchronization scheduling, list management or whatever is wrong with this DLL.

That poorly-designed software wasted about 48 hours for me. I guess they assume that people have itty-bitty contact lists (I have ~4000) or don't use SMARTPHONES to run their life and have calendar entries that run back for a while (mine goes back several years).

Basically the DLL isn't scaling against large data sets. Rookie programming.

Plaxo Version 3.8.0.64 - downloaded about 48.5 hours ago (note the timing)

:mad:

Graham Leach (Premium)

[EamonnP]

Hi Graham, Bryan and all,

Yes, Same issues with 3.8.0.64. XP Pro SP2 + Outlook 2003. Very slow start up of Outlook, High CPU usage. Throughout the working day Outlook consistently slowed to a stop. (No- I don't let Plaxo loose in the corporate phone book - just my local Contacts folders.)

I too disabled both COM+ addins on my work laptop. Problem went away. I also uninstalled Plaxo, and am waiting for our company support guys to see if they can suggest a "cure".

Reading the threads, it looks like I will have to wait for Bryan's colleagues to resolve the bug though!

This message is posted from my home machine. Vista Ultimate 64/Outlook 2007 - No such problems. Syncs perfectly with no slow down.

Not having Plaxo "live" on my work machine is a real pain. I am not a Premium member but have 9000+ contacts. Only a few hundred are active Plaxo members, so my activity log is pretty low wrt syncs.

Plaxo folks - I hope you solve this one quickly!

VBR

[JDSX]

I use Vista Ultimate at home and XP at work, both with Outlook 2007, and both instances exhibit this behavior. Basically when a change is made Outlook becomes unresponsive for a noticeable interval. Getting rid of Plaxo would be very painful for me but something has to be done.

Graham, that workaround you mention, does disabling that COM add-in disable any of the featureset?

[dtrounce]

I just found this thread after disabling the "Synchronize automatically" setting in Plaxo. I have the exact same problems which switching off auto-sync in Plaxo has fixed.

Windows XP Pro SP2
Outlook 2003 SP3
IBM Thinkpad T60 dual-core T2400 1.83GHz
2GB RAM
Internet connection through Stanford University - about 20Mbits/sec up and down :-)
Outlook online to my corporate Exchange server (via HTTPS) - non Stanford

Outlook has been freezing with near 50% CPU utilization (100% of one processor core). 20-40 second delays on changing any calendar or contact item. Email items are fine and send/receive very quickly. Outlook unusable most of the time given complete freezes.

Calendar items dating back several years
5000 contacts

[JDSX]

Any staff attention on this matter? This is a serious problem.

[bryan]

We're still investigating here. It does look like there can be an issue if you have a very large number of folders, for example if you have many PST files attached to Outlook. We'll continue to look into this to see if there are some improvements that can be made to help mitigate this problem.

[johnrellis]

Same symptoms for me -- when I make a change to the Calendar or Tasks, Outlook 2007 CPU goes to 100% for about a minute. This only started happening in the last week or so? Disabling the Plaxo Outlook add-in causes the symptoms to go away. Configuration:

-Outlook 2007
-Plaxo 3.10.0.44 (just upgraded to see if that would fix the problem; it doesn't)
-2904 Contacts in 4 folders
-Syncing of other folder types (e.g. Calendar) disabled
-28 .psts, average size 310 MB, max size 1,200 MB

Just to reinforce what others have said: Plaxo is targeted to power users, who have large numbers of contacts, calendar entries, email folders, etc. Not addressing this issue quickly will have a negative impact on your most valuable users.

[JDSX]

We're still investigating here. It does look like there can be an issue if you have a very large number of folders, for example if you have many PST files attached to Outlook. We'll continue to look into this to see if there are some improvements that can be made to help mitigate this problem.
I don't have a large number of folders, only the defaults plus whatever extras Plaxo itself created. Every time I make a change (contact, calendar, note, etc.) a few seconds later it locks up and stays that way for up to 30 seconds. I've been a loyal Plaxo user for a while but the moment I find another similar sync service I'm ditching you. It's that severe and you're not taking it seriously enough.

[bizhaoqi]

This is definitely happening in more than just a few cases. I first noticed the sync delay (any change whatsoever to any calendar, contact, task, or note in Outlook) when upgrading from the old Plaxo 2 (always worked great without any problems) to the new Plaxo 3 with Pulse. It was so immediately bad at the time (a few months ago) that I fortunately found a download of v.2 and went back to it for a while, but now I'm on a new machine and could only find v.3. It happens on both XP and Vista, Office 2003 and 2007, with every revision of Plaxo 3 I have been able to find (currently 3.10.0.44 as of today, still with no change). I have only one .PST by the way.

The delay consists of approximately 30 seconds of >50% utilization from outlook.exe (system has two CPUs) after making any change, during which time nothing can be done in Outlook--it is totally locked. This is extremely annoying because it even happens for example when creating a new appointment, after the new appointment window has opened but before much typing has occurred--preventing actually typing in the appointment details until it has finished syncing.

Please help by fixing this soon! Thanks.

[tarpy]

This is definitely happening in more than just a few cases. (snipage)

Please help by fixing this soon! Thanks.

I agree! I just disabled Plaxo in outlook as outlook was CRAWLING.

This just started a couple days ago...was there a system change/etc?

[JDSX]

I agree! I just disabled Plaxo in outlook as outlook was CRAWLING.

This just started a couple days ago...was there a system change/etc?
It's client-side, not server-side, and it's been going on for some time now. You probably just crossed whatever threshold triggers this problem.

[bizhaoqi]

This just started a couple days ago...was there a system change/etc?

Tarpy,

Did you happen to download a Plaxo update recently, or were there any other changes to your system around that time that you are aware of?

Thanks!

[tarpy]

Tarpy,

Did you happen to download a Plaxo update recently, or were there any other changes to your system around that time that you are aware of?

Thanks!

No Plaxo updates, but I did do the MSFT updates on update Tuesday (the only Outlook related update I installed was the update to the Junk email filter).

Re: folders/threshold: I have ~300 contacts, ~5000 calendar items, around 50 tasks, and 6 notes, so based on what I've read on the forums, I'm nowhere near the "oopsie" threashold.

[JDSX]

This is all Plaxo's fault, not Outlook, not Windows, just Plaxo. The Plaxo library locks up the Outlook process when it syncs.

[bryan]

Hey folks, thanks for your patience here - we're still investigating this issue. One customer reported that the slowdown improved after installing the 3.7 version (available at http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/release-3.7.0.49/PlaxoInstall_en.exe), however another customer tried the same thing and reported that this didn't help.

So we are continuing to investigate. So far on a variety of platforms and Outlook versions, we have been unable to produce a situation here where the Plaxo sync locks up Outlook. It's possible there is some conflict with another plug-in or that it's related to a specific type of configuration or setting. It's basically a question of trying to narrow down and identify what it might be specifically that would cause this. Thanks....

[hooper]

Been using plaxo a long time here. I have seen this issue as well crop up fairly recently... maybe a month or so. Same behavior (somewhat):

1. Add/Update/Delete calendar entry
2. CPU spikes and outlook becomes unresposive for a few seconds to ..... (based on machine specs).

Outlook 2003 here with latest updates.
ONLY 258 Contacts ---> changes/additions to this data set cause NO problems at all.
Several years of Calendar entries.... probably back to 2000 or so, any alteration causes problems above.

Gonna go with the Plaxo not handling large record sets properly, since contacts cause no issue.

Anyone know how to purge your Calendar over entries before a certain date?

[JDSX]

Downgrading to 3.7 didn't fix it. At work I run WinXP and Outlook 2007. At home it's Vista Ultimate and Outlook 2007. I don't have any special plugins besides Plaxo.

How come email notifications aren't working for this thread?

[Rik van der Schalie]

Same here. WinXP, Outlook 2007. Startup time of outlook in the order of several minutes, even though no synchronization actualy takes place (Plaxo claims that I have over 10.000 tasks!).
Disabeling plx_out.dll cures the problem.

[JDSX]

How long are you going to drag this torture out? Can you at least add back a timed synchronization option so it doesn't lock up the moment ANYTHING changes? Do you have any idea how insanely horrible your component is now?

[JDSX]

This problem is still in the latest release. Knock knock, anyone home?

[Miko]

Outlook 2007, vista SP1 same problem here...
after uninstalling, it even refuses to install again !

[JDSX]

Plaxo devs have taken the ever-popular "ignore it and it will go away" approach.

[gwhite13]

I have the same problem. This is torture. I have Outlook 2003, xp pro, 1 .pst and large files. This was not an issue up until recently and after reading these threads you guys need to do something ASAP. I am a premium user and can't use plaxo with outlook?? What gives?

[Rik van der Schalie]

Actually, disabling the outlook plugin wasn't enough for me. It turned out that plaxohelper_en.exe slowed my entire system to a crawl, using between 98% and 100% CPU, even with the Outlook plugin uninstalled. This happen every few days, and when it happend the only solution was to reset my computer. Waiting for the performance to improve would take hours (I've tried this a few times).
I've decided to remove Plaxo helper from my system, and I won't reinstall until this problem has been solved.

[JDSX]

Hey folks, thanks for your patience here - we're still investigating this issue. One customer reported that the slowdown improved after installing the 3.7 version (available at http://down.plaxo.com/down2/outlook/release-3.7.0.49/PlaxoInstall_en.exe), however another customer tried the same thing and reported that this didn't help.

So we are continuing to investigate. So far on a variety of platforms and Outlook versions, we have been unable to produce a situation here where the Plaxo sync locks up Outlook. It's possible there is some conflict with another plug-in or that it's related to a specific type of configuration or setting. It's basically a question of trying to narrow down and identify what it might be specifically that would cause this. Thanks....
So how's it going Bryan? Make any headway?

[gwhite13]

I'd like an update as well. Thanks.

[JDSX]

Since no one from Plaxo seems to be monitoring this thread, does anyone know a good alternative service to Plaxo? Something that can basically sync multiple Outlooks to each other without locking up for 30 seconds as soon as an item is edited.

[gwhite13]

Hang in there. Working with support and they are trying to troubleshoot. I'll post the results as soon as there is a resolution.

[JDSX]

Hang in there. Working with support and they are trying to troubleshoot. I'll post the results as soon as there is a resolution.
How's that going? I can't tell you how much fun it is to be writing an email only to have the whole application lock up because of a random Plaxo sync or if someone sends me a meeting invite that gets added to calendar that kicks off a sync. In fact, I just wrote this whole post while waiting for Outlook to unlock. Amazing job coding Plaxo 3, guys.

[Pscobee]

Me too, this sucks.....

If it can't be fixed, I am going to have to dump plaxo and wait for a fix

:(

[gwhite13]

How's that going? I can't tell you how much fun it is to be writing an email only to have the whole application lock up because of a random Plaxo sync or if someone sends me a meeting invite that gets added to calendar that kicks off a sync. In fact, I just wrote this whole post while waiting for Outlook to unlock. Amazing job coding Plaxo 3, guys.

Worked with a Plaxo engineer this evening and we were able to duplicate the issues most seem to be experiencing or should I say the issues were witnessed. Hopefully now since they have something to work with perhaps there will be a resolution sooner than later.

[MattMJP]

Worked with a Plaxo engineer this evening and we were able to duplicate the issues most seem to be experiencing or should I say the issues were witnessed. Hopefully now since they have something to work with perhaps there will be a resolution sooner than later.

Hi,

Same problem here I think. Whenever I update my Calendar a few seconds later outlook hangs for 5-10 seconds - i think while it syncs.

Does get very frustrating.

thanks

Matt

[JDSX]

Hi,

Same problem here I think. Whenever I update my Calendar a few seconds later outlook hangs for 5-10 seconds - i think while it syncs.

Does get very frustrating.

thanks

Matt
Don't worry...they'll get right on it! lol

[MattMJP]

Hi Bryan or any other plaxo technical chaps.

Can we have an update on this issue which seems to be related to the amount of data in either the appointments or contacts etc.

I'm getting to the stage where I will need to uninstall plaxo as it freezes outlook for 20 seconds or so whenever i modify an appointment.

I think this does need to be resolved as it is likely to affect quite a large number of people even if they don't report it in the forum.

thanks

Matt

[JDSX]

I need to test a bit more but the latest release (I upgraded today) might have fixed it. There's still a small performance hit but not an outright stall.

[DocKill]

my performance has continued to improve since the upgrade. thankx plaxo!

[Domdom]

My own feedback: sync works fine so far but when the plugin is enabled, Outlook is at 50% all the time :mad: :mad:
So I just unticked the plugin and back to normal but unable to sync, I guess I will enable the plugin whenever I need to sync ...
Akward

XP SP2, Outlook 2003 SP3