Performance issues with 1Password for Windows

1Password on my PC has performance issues that are likely due to having over 700 logins, but it's making it problematic to use (as I use it throughout the day). My PC laptop is now a couple years old but should have no problem with an app like 1Password. When first loading after it has been locked, 1Password takes a good 5-10 seconds to open *if* I have my list of logins showing that aren't filtered in any way. My guess is that it is calculating the password complexity of each one. In addition, using in Chrome is instantaneous after first use, but when first opening it takes a good 5-10 seconds for the 1Password dialogue to appear.

1) Is there a way to hide the password complexity column? It's useful, but not at the expense of wasting so much time.
2) Am I the only one experiencing these performance issues?
3) I do know that when in trial mode the wait was horrible, as I assume it was calling home to see if it was authorized or not - I would recommend fixing this as it is a huge red flag for people looking to purchase.

And why is there no way to edit the passcard in the Chrome dialogue. I heard awhile back that the intention is to get the Windows implementation up to feature parity with the Mac version, but even with the passage of time it's still hurting. Makes me cry going to my PC after using 1Password on the Mac.

I switched from Roboform because the Mac implementation is so slick and I needed a solid way to have everything synced between all platforms (and Roboform for the Mac has some downsides, although at this point it's better than 1Password for Windows)...the PC version however is not giving me much love.

Thanks.

Windows 7 x64 Ultimate
4GB RAM
Core 2 Duo
Intel x-25m SSD

Macbook Air 13" (latest)
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Comments

  • svondutch
    svondutch
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2011
    Where is your 1Password.agilekeychain located?
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2011
    Ted, welcome to the forum!

    The new 1Password for Windows extension for Chrome 16 should be identical to the 1Password for Mac extension for Chrome 16, including the "edit" feature:

    2011-12-14_17-06-46.png


    Are you sure you've updated 1Password as shown in the topic at the top of the forum?
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member

    Where is your 1Password.agilekeychain located?


    In my Dropbox directory (which happens to be on d:\dropbox\... ). So I'm possibly one of the few experiencing this issue? I do have 700+ logins.
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member
    edited December 2011
    DBrown wrote:

    Ted, welcome to the forum!

    The new 1Password for Windows extension for Chrome 16 should be identical to the 1Password for Mac extension for Chrome 16, including the "edit" feature:

    2011-12-14_17-06-46.png


    Are you sure you've updated 1Password as shown in the topic at the top of the forum?


    I had already followed those instructions, but no window appeared to apply the Chrome extension update. And based on this misleading page http://help.agilebit...me_support.html I presumed it was using the latest plugin.

    Therefore, based on the screenshot I was able to figure out https://agilebits.co...ome.html?beta=y (which by the way wasn't available anywhere that I could see on your site or even searching via Google) and now I'm good to go with a much improved Chrome 1Password plugin (hurrah!).

    So now just down to the poor 1Password app performance when first opening.
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    Great news. Thanks for the update! You don't need the beta, but you do need to install the Chrome 16 extension:

    https://agilebits.com/extensions/win/index.html

    From there you can (optionally) check the box to enable betas if you like. It sounds like you already know all this, but I want to be clear for other folks coming across this thread as well. :)

    I'll update the docs to make it clearer that the page is referring to 1Password for Mac and also include instructions for Windows.

    Thanks for bringing that to our attention!

    Cheers,
  • jpgoldberg
    jpgoldberg
    1Password Alumni
    I'm glad you got everything updated, and that that has improved things.


    So now just down to the poor 1Password app performance when first opening.

    Your 700 items isn't at all unusual. But it does take more time to read in each of these files (each item has its own separate files) under NTFS (Windows file system) than under HFS (Mac file system). One thing that can really add delays are virus scanners that check each file as it is loaded. If you have such a virus scanner in place, see if you can configure it to not scan things in the 1Password.agilekeychain folder.


    You may be right about the password strength calculation. Earlier versions of 1Password relied on this being stored in the data files, but we've recently changed that. So you may, indeed, be seeing a side effect of that change. Your suggestion of making the password strength information optional is something well worth discussing. I can't promise anything, but this is something we will at least explore.

    Again, the first thing to do is to check for virus scanners checking every file that get's loaded. This has proven to be the second single cause of slow data loading in 1Password for Windows.

    The biggest one is if your data are not on a local drive. You mentioned that your Dropbox folder is on your D:\ drive. How is that drive attached?

    Cheers,

    -j
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2011
    ...based on this misleading page http://help.agilebit...me_support.html I presumed it was using the latest plugin.


    Ted, what's misleading about that page?
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member
    edited December 2011
    DBrown wrote:

    Ted, what's misleading about that page?


    "If you are using Windows, when 1Password starts it will automatically enable its extension for Google Chrome if the browser is installed."

    It doesn't enable its extension for Google Chrome, or at least, it doesn't upgrade it. I was using an old extension that didn't have near the functionality, and didn't know it even though I've updated 1Password two or three times already (with no way of really knowing without unnecessarily digging around). The assumption being that if you upgrade the local app, either the extensions would also be upgraded at the same time, or there would be a prompt to check to upgrade in a separate process. Neither happened, and I even manually checked that page which I understood to mean that upgrades also took place in a seamless process.

    I would suggest that there at least be a link on that page to the manual install page, and preferably a way to easily verify that you are running the latest (easy to do in Roboform - just check for upgrade checks for both the local Windows app while also verifying that your browser plugin/extension is also up to date).
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member
    jpgoldberg wrote:

    I'm glad you got everything updated, and that that has improved things.


    Your 700 items isn't at all unusual. But it does take more time to read in each of these files (each item has its own separate files) under NTFS (Windows file system) than under HFS (Mac file system). One thing that can really add delays are virus scanners that check each file as it is loaded. If you have such a virus scanner in place, see if you can configure it to not scan things in the 1Password.agilekeychain folder.


    You may be right about the password strength calculation. Earlier versions of 1Password relied on this being stored in the data files, but we've recently changed that. So you may, indeed, be seeing a side effect of that change. Your suggestion of making the password strength information optional is something well worth discussing. I can't promise anything, but this is something we will at least explore.

    Again, the first thing to do is to check for virus scanners checking every file that get's loaded. This has proven to be the second single cause of slow data loading in 1Password for Windows.

    The biggest one is if your data are not on a local drive. You mentioned that your Dropbox folder is on your D:\ drive. How is that drive attached?

    Cheers,

    -j


    1. Disabled anti-virus and still same performance.
    2. Not on system reboot or anything, just on unlock of app (even if leave app open and unlock - still same looooong wait).
    3. Definitely is the password complexity issue especially in light of the recent change where it needs to recalculate it everytime it's needed (aka whenever I unlock the app in the Logins view). As it actually consistently takes over 30 seconds (timed it several times now) to unlock the app if it's in the Logins view. If it's in any other view (i.e. Accounts), it's near instantaneous. Please fix! It's not enough to make me throw in the towel with it and go back to Roboform (because the Mac app is so slick), but it's....problematic.
    4. My d: is a second internal SATA drive (c: is my SSD). It's still a 7200RPM so no concerns there.

    Ted
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member
    edited December 2011

    I had already followed those instructions, but no window appeared to apply the Chrome extension update. And based on this misleading page http://help.agilebit...me_support.html I presumed it was using the latest plugin.

    Therefore, based on the screenshot I was able to figure out https://agilebits.co...ome.html?beta=y (which by the way wasn't available anywhere that I could see on your site or even searching via Google) and now I'm good to go with a much improved Chrome 1Password plugin (hurrah!).

    So now just down to the poor 1Password app performance when first opening.


    Oh noes! The changed extension breaks my keyboard shortcut! My mapped alt-z no longer auto-fills the password in Chrome (I have to use the mouse). Setting it to something else and back again makes no change. Very sad. One good thing is that even after a reboot the response is now instantaneous (whereas before the update the extension took a good 5-10 seconds to show up the first time). That's very good news.

    And is there any keyboard shortcut in Windows 1Password to edit a login? The mac has command-E. So many things not there yet with the Windows app :-(

    FYI:
    [font=Arial, sans-serif]1Password Beta[/font][font=Arial, sans-serif]3.8.9.38904[/font]
    [font=Arial, sans-serif]Chrome 15.0.874.121 m (upgrading as we speak so perhaps that will help).[/font]
    [font=Arial, sans-serif]1Password 1.0.0.246[/font]
    [font=Arial, sans-serif]Update: still same problem with Chrome [/font]16.0.912.63 m

    (and I should make this a separate thread...oh well)
  • jpgoldberg
    jpgoldberg
    1Password Alumni
    Thanks for doing all of that testing to isolate the problem, Ted.


    3. Definitely is the password complexity issue [...]

    Yep. Now Stefan can say a big "I told you you so" to me.

    We didn't see such a large performance hit in our testing, but we didn't have a wide range of systems to actually test on. And although yours is the only report so far (that I know of), I would be very surprised if you were the only one experiencing this.

    Again, we don't like to promise things until they are delivered, and there are a number of ways in which we could address this. (Your suggestion of only displaying the password strength information when a user requests it is one of several approaches.) So at this point all I can say is that we are aware of the problem and exploring how we want to approach it.

    Again, thanks for the steps you've taken to rule out other causes.

    Cheers,

    -j
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member
    jpgoldberg wrote:

    Thanks for doing all of that testing to isolate the problem, Ted.


    Yep. Now Stefan can say a big "I told you you so" to me.

    We didn't see such a large performance hit in our testing, but we didn't have a wide range of systems to actually test on. And although yours is the only report so far (that I know of), I would be very surprised if you were the only one experiencing this.

    Again, we don't like to promise things until they are delivered, and there are a number of ways in which we could address this. (Your suggestion of only displaying the password strength information when a user requests it is one of several approaches.) So at this point all I can say is that we are aware of the problem and exploring how we want to approach it.

    Again, thanks for the steps you've taken to rule out other causes.

    Cheers,

    -j


    Thanks Jeffrey for the update. Looking forward to the myriad of improvement you'll be bringing to the Windows 1Password app ;-)

    Are you involved in the Chrome extension (which lost my keyboard shortcut?)?

    Ted
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2011

    "If you are using Windows, when 1Password starts it will automatically enable its extension for Google Chrome if the browser is installed."

    It doesn't enable its extension for Google Chrome, or at least, it doesn't upgrade it.


    Thanks, Ted!

    You're right: the page was written by a 1Password for Mac support person, and 1Password for Windows (up to now, at least) behaves differently.

    1Password for Windows (again, up to now) automatically enables only Internet Explorer, regardless of what browsers are detected.

    What the page should say is that 1Password will detect automatically on launch if you're using the old version of the extension for Chrome and display a prompt from which you can get the new extension, as described in *** NEW extension for Chrome 16 *** in this forum.

    I hope the page will be updated to contain accurate information, even though I'd quibble over the use of "misleading"...it's just inaccurate. (blush)

    Anyway, I'm sorry I missed it—couldn't see the forest for the trees. I thank you again for pointing it out.
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member
    DBrown wrote:

    Thanks, Ted!

    You're right: the page was written by a 1Password for Mac support person, and 1Password for Windows (up to now, at least) behaves differently.

    1Password for Windows (again, up to now) automatically enables only Internet Explorer, regardless of what browsers are detected.

    What the page should say is that 1Password will detect automatically on launch if you're using the old version of the extension for Chrome and display a prompt from which you can get the new extension, as described in *** NEW extension for Chrome 16 *** in this forum.

    I hope the page will be updated to contain accurate information, even though I'd quibble over the use of "misleading"...it's just inaccurate. (blush)

    Anyway, I'm sorry I missed it—couldn't see the forest for the trees. I thank you again for pointing it out.


    Apart from the first time I've yet to have received a prompt and I've now done updates three times (I've got it set to get the betas). That page led me to believe that my Chrome extension was up-to-date ;-)

    Ted
  • svondutch
    svondutch
    1Password Alumni

    In my Dropbox directory (which happens to be on d:\dropbox\... ). So I'm possibly one of the few experiencing this issue? I do have 700+ logins.


    Are you sure this is a local (not a shared) drive? 700+ logins should not be a problem.
  • svondutch
    svondutch
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2011

    "If you are using Windows, when 1Password starts it will automatically enable its extension for Google Chrome if the browser is installed."


    It is going to do this only if...
    1) you have Chome 16
    2) you have our old (now deprecated) extension for Chrome installed

    Our old (now deprecated) extension does not work in Chrome 16. That's why 1Password will prompt you for this update when 1Password starts.

    If you're not running Chrome 16, or if you're not running our old (now deprecated) extension for Chrome, you should not see the prompt, and you can install our new extension for Chrome here: File > Preferences (Ctrl+P) > Browsers
  • jpgoldberg
    jpgoldberg
    1Password Alumni
    Hi Stefan,

    This discussion has wandered all over the place, so you may have missed that Ted's d:\ drive is an internal SATA 7200 RPM drive. Also he had the slowness not only when 1Password first launches, but every time he unlocks the application. It really does look like it's the calculation of password strength that is behind the lag here.

    Still, I'm not seeing that kind of lag even though I'm running Windows in a VM is limited to one (2.66GHz) CPU. (Though that is still more speed than older laptops running Windows).

    Ted, can you tell us a bit more about your hardware and OS?

    Cheers,

    -j
  • svondutch
    svondutch
    1Password Alumni
    @Ted: how many items are you seeing "in view" (in other words: how many items are displayed in the list at any given time without scrolling the list?)
  • jpgoldberg
    jpgoldberg
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2011
    DBrown wrote:

    You're right: the page was written by a 1Password for Mac support person,

    Guilty as charged (even though I wasn't the one who wrote that specific comment).

    We Mac folk can forget that the extension mechanism we brought to the Mac almost half a year ago is new for 1Password for Windows.

    The new (on Windows) extensions for Chrome and Safari work very differently from what you've seen before. They need to be installed using the browsers extension installers. The "install" button in the 1Password Preference pane will open the browser and direct it to the right place to fetch the extensions.

    1PWin-browser-prefs-20111216-102433.png


    Once those are installed, the browser extension system will take care of updating the extensions. One advantage of this is that we can get improvements out to the browser extensions without having to release a new version of the 1Password application itself.

    One downside is that our documentation for this browser extension is buried in our 1Password for Mac documentation. Thus, more confusion on top of the fact that the update process has changed.

    Cheers,

    -j
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member

    Are you sure this is a local (not a shared) drive? 700+ logins should not be a problem.


    Most definitely sure ;-) Have an SSD for my main OS drive and secondary internal drive is a 7200RPM SATA spindle. No bottleneck there (well, apart from it not being an SSD too).
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member
    jpgoldberg wrote:

    Hi Stefan,

    This discussion has wandered all over the place, so you may have missed that Ted's d:\ drive is an internal SATA 7200 RPM drive. Also he had the slowness not only when 1Password first launches, but every time he unlocks the application. It really does look like it's the calculation of password strength that is behind the lag here.

    Still, I'm not seeing that kind of lag even though I'm running Windows in a VM is limited to one (2.66GHz) CPU. (Though that is still more speed than older laptops running Windows).

    Ted, can you tell us a bit more about your hardware and OS?

    Cheers,

    -j


    HP HDX 18t
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Windows 7 x64 Ultimate[/font]
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]4GB RAM[/font]
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Core 2 Duo (T9600)[/font]
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]C: Intel x-25m SSD[/font]
    D: 7200RPM SATA

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]So definitely not a spec issue (unless your definition of what a password app should require in terms of resources is whacked). Although the laptop is now a couple years old, I have no problem running Visual Studio and a VM or two to do daily dev work on it.[/font]
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member

    @Ted: how many items are you seeing "in view" (in other words: how many items are displayed in the list at any given time without scrolling the list?)


    Not very many. I'd have to double check, but quite likely < 25. And again, replicate by:

    1. Put view in Logins.
    2. Lock 1Password
    2. Unlock 1Password
    3. Wait 30+ seconds.

    It does NOT occur if:

    1. Put view on something other than logins
    2. Lock 1Password
    3. Unlock 1Password
    4. Immediately opens.
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member
    tulbox wrote:

    Oh noes! The changed extension breaks my keyboard shortcut! My mapped alt-z no longer auto-fills the password in Chrome (I have to use the mouse). Setting it to something else and back again makes no change. Very sad. One good thing is that even after a reboot the response is now instantaneous (whereas before the update the extension took a good 5-10 seconds to show up the first time). That's very good news.

    And is there any keyboard shortcut in Windows 1Password to edit a login? The mac has command-E. So many things not there yet with the Windows app :-(

    FYI:
    [font=Arial, sans-serif]1Password Beta[/font][font=Arial, sans-serif]3.8.9.38904[/font]
    [font=Arial, sans-serif]Chrome 15.0.874.121 m (upgrading as we speak so perhaps that will help).[/font]
    [font=Arial, sans-serif]1Password 1.0.0.246[/font]
    [font=Arial, sans-serif]Update: still same problem with Chrome [/font]16.0.912.63 m

    (and I should make this a separate thread...oh well)


    This issue now on separate thread ((I'm not the only one) as it's confusing enough following everything on the performance end of things. See http://forum.agilebits.com/index.php?/topic/9744-1password-chrome-shortcut-problem/page__hl__+keyboard++shortcut__fromsearch__1
  • jpgoldberg
    jpgoldberg
    1Password Alumni
    tulbox wrote:

    HP HDX 18t
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Windows 7 x64 Ultimate[/font]
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]4GB RAM[/font]
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Core 2 Duo (T9600)[/font]
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]C: Intel x-25m SSD[/font]
    D: 7200RPM SATA

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]So definitely not a spec issue (unless your definition of what a password app should require in terms of resources is whacked).[/font]
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]
    [/font]
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]We try to stay on this side of sanity. That's a fast and powerful machine. My Windows VM isn't up to your system, but I'm not seeing what you are reporting.[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]I'm just thinking aloud here, but I wonder if the crypto libraries we use are so tuned for 32bit systems that they actually slow down on 64bit. This is just wild speculation, and Stefan will be correct me if I'm off base here.[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Cheers,[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]-j[/font]
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member
    jpgoldberg wrote:

    [/font][/color]
    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]We try to stay on this side of sanity. That's a fast and powerful machine. My Windows VM isn't up to your system, but I'm not seeing what you are reporting.[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]I'm just thinking aloud here, but I wonder if the crypto libraries we use are so tuned for 32bit systems that they actually slow down on 64bit. This is just wild speculation, and Stefan will be correct me if I'm off base here.[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Cheers,[/font]

    [font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]-j[/font]


    If you send me a custom build of 1Password that doesn't include the password complexity issue I can see if that actually solves it. That way we're not going on a rabbit trail. And I'd be willing to have a remote session so you can see it in action...but it will have to be in the New Year because of current schedule.

    One other thing is that all logins are imported from Roboform, and none of the username fields were matched (although the passwords were). I've matched them manually as needed in the meantime, but perhaps there's logic that borks on that when binding to the logins view.
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2011
    Ted, I'd like to confirm that your D: drive is physically "part of" your local machine (that is, an internal or local external drive), rather than mapped to a network share drive. Is that correct?

    (I ask because we've heard from many customers—and found in our own tests, long ago—that 1Password often exhibits poor performance when the 1Password data folder resides on a network share.)
  • tulbox
    tulbox
    Community Member
    DBrown wrote:

    Ted, I'd like to confirm that your D: drive is physically "part of" your local machine (that is, an internal or local external drive), rather than mapped to a network share drive. Is that correct?

    (I ask because we've heard from many customers—and found in our own tests, long ago—that 1Password often exhibits poor performance when the 1Password data folder resides on a network share.)


    Most definitely an internal SATA drive. It's a desktop replacement laptop with two drive bays (and no, there are no performance issues with it otherwise). Just like a secondary drive bay in a tower.
  • DBrown
    DBrown
    1Password Alumni
    edited December 2011
    Thanks, Ted.

    You can tell I'm grasping at straws, because I just haven't been able to replicate the performance problem you're reporting.
  • svondutch
    svondutch
    1Password Alumni
    tulbox wrote:

    Is there a way to hide the password complexity column? It's useful, but not at the expense of wasting so much time.


    I have added the following menu item:

    View > Show Password Strength

    To be included with 1.0.9.248
  • jpgoldberg
    jpgoldberg
    1Password Alumni

    I have added the following menu item:

    View > Show Password Strength

    To be included with 1.0.9.248

    Thanks Stefan!

    I see that 1.0.9.248 is already out.

    Ted, let's see if this works for you.

    (If it does we are still left with the puzzle of why password strength calculation takes so much longer on Ted's system.)

    Cheers,

    -j
This discussion has been closed.