Why would a slower system run a very complex macro but the superior machine won't?

I've been running some reports from Excel (client side) and started using logmein to my home desktop to process some reports that my desktop at work can't handle for some reason. Even though the desktop at home has 8 gb of ram and a duo core processor my work machine has a i5 with 16 gigs of ram. Is there a reason why the slower machine can run this massive macro while the superior work machine chokes out from system resources? I've checked and both machines are running 32 bit version of Office 2010. For the life of me I don't understand why the slower system runs the macro (which takes over an hour) and the superior machine chokes out after 15 - 20 minutes. Any thoughts? On a side note I have closed out Outlook and other applications that could take up resources and no dice. However the home built machine just chugs a long like a little beast. I do have superior parts like system board (ASUS) and a dedicated graphics card 1gb GE force. Along with "Gamer" ram (8 gbs). Is it a matter of quality is better than quantity?

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Comments

ratbuddy

Both machines running 64 bit Windows?

edit: Oh, brand of components and having a dedicated GPU don't matter. Parts only matter if something is actually defective. Slapping a 'gamer' label on something just means they are probably charging more for it. At one point, Nvidia had 'gaming shorts' on their webstore. Not kidding.

wes allen

AV the same on both?

cpartin

What exactly do you mean when you say "chokes out"? Does the process hang / crash?

WafflesAndRootbeer

Give us some system resource usage info and maybe we can figure this out. You may want to also check to see specific CPU usage on the slow runner to see if it isn't using multi-core affinity, which may be the issue here.

N2IT

I assume AV means Audio Video. The inferior machine has a 1 gb video card along with the 8 gb of ram. The work machine has 16 gb with an i5. Both have 64 bit Windows 7. Chokes out = runs out of resources to continue on with the Macro.

N2IT

At waffle the i5 is using all 5 cores, I think the Due is using one processor. Do you think disabling the cores in Excel could provide additional stability?

cpartin

AV = AntiVirus. GPU isn't relative to this problem. Need to see the system resource usage as mentioned above.

N2IT

cpartin wrote: »

AV = AntiVirus. GPU isn't relative to this problem. Need to see the system resource usage as mentioned above.

Home machine uses standard MS product at work uses Symantec AV.

wes allen

You might see if you can exclude the files you are working on from the real time AV scan at work, to see if that changes anything. Real time scans can jack up all kinds of things.

NotHackingYou

What is the IO like on each machine?

WafflesAndRootbeer

N2IT wrote: »

At waffle the i5 is using all 5 cores, I think the Due is using one processor. Do you think disabling the cores in Excel could provide additional stability?

Possibly. It may be a calculation issue as well. There are tools you can use to measure the calculation times and settings you can modify for using near real-time system access.

ptilsen

Definitely disable antivirus temporarily as a test, then look at exclusions if that's the culprit.

If the macro does anything that touches storage and the storage is a hard disk, certainly look at fragmentation. Always worth running chkdsk to see that there aren't drive problems, regardless. They can manifest in almost any way imaginable, including seemingly random performance problems.

Obviously look at resource utilization outside of that, particularly the performance tab of Task Manager. You can usually get quite a bit just from a glance. For example, if your work machine as 30 more processes and twice as many handles or twice the memory utilization of your home machine, it could easily explain the performance difference.

caber

At work, where is the excel sheet saved? If on a network share, try saving a copy of it to your C: drive and see if it makes a difference.

ajs1976

Location of file and any data it is accessing - local, network share?

Is the drive it is running from encrypted?

In additional to the antivirus software, are there any other security software running on the computer?

N2IT

Antivirus has been disabled and I am running it locally at the C root. I am still exploring other options but for now I am running it remotely from my home PC. It's working....