[texworks] TeXworks loading problems under Win 10 aufter update

[Stefan Löffler]

Dear Peter,

On 21.09.20 02:12, Peter Seitz wrote:
> I am using texworks v. 0.6.3 (travis-ci) [r.a2470ca, 16.03.2019 18:06] 
> from the Tex-Live 2019 distribution on a Windows 10 (64-Bit) system. 
> I've installed it on a server using UNC-Path, which means I have not 
> mapped a drive letter.
>
> I could open texworks when clicking on a *.tex file and it did load 
> quite fast (2-3 secconds).
> After an Windows update last week suddenly texworks needs a few MINUTES 
> to load. it eats about 15% of CPU time and is labled as high energy 
> consumption in task manager. When it finally loads, it needs a long 
> time until the PDFLaTeX compiler starts, but then produces aa pdf.
>
> I'd like to know if these problems are known or do you have an 
> explaination for this behaviour?

Something similar (maybe the same underlying issue) has been reported at
https://github.com/TeXworks/texworks/issues/904.
Right now, it seems that this relates to how Windows (or maybe just the
Windows Defender) treats network files and directories. The above issue
report has some links, but searching the internet reveals many others,
e.g.
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2168064-why-is-windows-10-very-slow-to-open-network-files.
It seems that this problems comes and goes with Windows updates, and may
be related to networking configurations such as those of NetBIOS and/or SMB.
Unfortunately, there is not much we can do from the TeXworks side of
things, as far as I can tell. You can try to install TeXworks locally
(one variant comes as a zip that you simply unpack), but as long as the
tex programs reside on the network I doubt this will speed things up.

HTH,
Stefan