Selecting UI-elements in the recorder is super slow

[ThomasFonn]

Hi everyone,

Whenever I try to select a UI-element with the recorder, it takes about 30-60 seconds for it to register the click.

It didn't use to be this way for me, I've tried to reinstall the PAD and make a fresh flow but it makes no difference.
Could it be that my anti-virus is too strict? (I can't disable it to test)

How would I go about fixing this, or at least finding the source of this?

I appreciate any help 🙂

Best regards,

Thomas Fonn

[OkanAT]

Hi,

It is very slow when I use it within VMware because the CPU resources are trash, at least thats why its working so slow when I build flows within VM.

So a lot of anti virus programs might actually be using alot of your CPU maybe? You should check it out.

[ThomasFonn]

Hi @OkanAT it doesn't seem like i'm running into any CPU-bottleneck or freezing of any sort, just that it is waiting for actions for a very long time as seen in this image

So if I have to click on multiple things, it would take a few minutes

[OkanAT]

Could it be that your flow is very big?

Try selecting the ui element from a new flow and copy it to your head flow. Obviously a work around... But otherwise i have no idea, maybe @VJR knows?

Good luck.

[ThomasFonn]

Sadly this happens in a blank flow as well

[VJR]

@ThomasFonn, are you trying to spy a Windows application or a Web application?

Also check if this is happening with every single application or just the one you are trying to.

This will tell whether it is an issue while detecting elements only with a particular application or within PAD/machine itself.

[ThomasFonn]

Hi @VJR
Thanks for guiding me, I get the same issue with every windows application I try to record (including just the windows desktop itself), but almost no delay when doing web recordings.

CPU is at about 8% usage when recording so it looks more like its awaiting something rather than hitting a limit.

The reason I brought up antivirus is because our domain recently enforced Microsoft Defender for Endpoints P2 and we've seen long wait times for validation of Office365-files when opening them, but in those instances, the office365-program atleast displays a message that it's awaiting some extra validation from Defender

[Jacgeld]

Hi @ThomasFonn  

Did you find a solution?
I seem to have the same problem when a specific application is open on my PC.

[ThomasFonn]

Hi Jacgeld,

Sorry I didn't find a solution yet. 😞
I was hoping this was something that was going to get patched in a performance update.

[Jacgeld]

Thank you for your reply.
In my case, it is a specific application from Autodesk that blocks all work with UI elements.
I can't even operate the calculator if the Autodesk application is open.

If I run the Autodesk application with administrator rights, my UI elements work again, but with the exception of the Autodesk application, as the permission level is now different from PADs.

If I find a solution, I will let you know.

[stabilus]

Same exact problem here. Recording the selection UI elements waits for actions for over 30 seconds each. And running the flow takes 50 seconds to click the first UI element.

[cthomasElan]

I'm running into the same problem as well! We did just change our firewall, but I figured that wouldn't impact something on a local PC that is just trying to double click a desktop application. I haven't found a work around, but it's affecting all of my flows speeds too, they seem to take forever to use UI based steps, but anything that's not interacting with a UI element performs the action after the specified time between steps (100ms for me).

EDIT:

Today's been a fun day of troubleshooting! Some important information is that we just recently updated security stuff, which hasn't seemed to affect any other process in normal day to day usage of applications.

So I have tried to run the same flows on my admin account on the same desktop and it works perfectly fine.

Comparing my normal account to my admin account: CPU Usage for both peaks at about 15% and Memory Usage floats around 60% (this plus running on the same desktop kinda rules out hardware bottlenecks in my mind), runtime of the flow on Admin account was roughly 8 seconds, runtime of the flow on the normal account was roughly 6 minutes, adding a UI element with the UI element picker recognized the UI elements instantly on both, but the "wait for action" step on the Admin account took less than a second while it took roughly 45 seconds on the normal account (and the normal account didn't even show the UI element in the elements list afterwards).

Even with task manager open while running the steps, the same background processes seemed present, so to me it seems like the more restrictive privileges associated with the normal account are the most likely culprit. System, flow, background tasks, and resources were the same for both accounts, so it seems as though the new security changes that are likely more prevalent on the normal account is what's to blame.

I have our IT expert looking into what new changes have occurred in the background with the security update, so I will update again if there's anything that's concrete or a good resolution!