iTunes 9 - slow startup

After upgrading to iTunes version 9, iTunes is incredibly slow at starting. I have a library of about 2300 songs and it went from loading in about 5 seconds on the last 8.x relase to apx 30 seconds on version 9.0.1.8.

I tried a few tweaks like turning off automatic update on playlists, disabling automatic discovery etc but nothing really made much difference.

When searching through the library file (usually c:\users\{username}\music\itunes\iTunes Music Library.xml) i noticed it had a few links to a network share from which I imported a few files rather than to the local library folder on my c-drive.

These remained from before I checked the "copy files to the iTunes Media folder..."-option. Apparently iTunes 9.x now tries to verify these files upon startup (and fails when the network share is not available). Removing the files from the library and importing them again (creating copies to my local itunes music folder) did the trick. iTunes launching time is now back to what it used to be.

Exchange 2007 - old routing group connectors

The following error recently started showing up on our Exchange 2007 server:

Event Type: Warning

Event Source: MSExchange ADAccess

Event Category: Validation

Event ID: 2159

Date: 20.09.2009

Time: 14:15:30

User: N/A

Computer: EXSRV1

Description:

Process edgetransport.exe (Transport) (PID=4900). Configuration object CN=EXSRV1-EXSRV20,CN=Connections,CN=Exchange Routing Group (DWBGZMFD01QNBJR),CN=Routing Groups,CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT),CN=Administrative Groups,CN=DN,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services,CN=Configuration,DC=mycompany,DC=intern read from dc1.mycompany.intern failed validation and will be excluded from the result set. Set event logging level for Validation category to Maximum to get additional events about each failure.

EXSRV20 is our old Exchange 2000 server, and looking at the object with adsiedit shows me that I indeed seem to have forgotten to remove the routing group connectors used when upgrading to Exchange 2007 last year. Brainfart! I guess I was lucky that the object is not valid anymore so the error is being logged.

Powershell does the trick:

Get-RoutingGroupConnector

Name SourceRoutingGroup TargetRoutingGroup

---- ------------------ ------------------

EXSRV1-EXSRV20 Exchange Routing Group ... TRONDHEIM

WARNING: Object DNSRV1-DNSRV20 has been corrupted and it is in an inconsistent

state. The following validation errors have occurred:

WARNING: TargetTransportServerVsis is mandatory.

WARNING: TargetTransportServerVsis is mandatory.

EXSRV20-EXSRV1 TRONDHEIM Exchange Routing Group ...

The following commands:

Remove-RoutingGroupConnector EXSRV1-EXSRV20

and

Remove-RoutingGroupConnector EXSRV20-EXSRV1

disposed of the two connectors in a clean manner, and the eventlog is clean again.

Windows 7 hibernate problems

Theres been one problem with my installation of Windows 7 so far. Ever so often when I start up from hibernate the computer will just omit the hibernate procedure and boot normally instead. It will only happen maybe one out of ten times, but it always seem to happen when I have a lot of stuff running so it's annoying!

According to Microsoft (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/974772) this could be due to a an inconcistency between the physical amount of ram, and the size of the hibernate file. I have 4 gigs and the hiberfil.sys appears to be too small:

C:\Windows\system32>dir /a c:\hiberfil.sys

Volume in drive C has no label.

Volume Serial Number is F08F-0F2D

Directory of c:\

17.09.2009 21:32 2 817 048 576 hiberfil.sys

Microsoft recommends increasing the size (run from cmd.exe as administrator):

C:\Windows\system32> powercfg /hibernate /size 100

The hiberfile size has been set to: 3756064768 bytes.

C:\Windows\system32>dir /a c:\hiberfil.sys

Volume in drive C has no label.

Volume Serial Number is F08F-0F2D

Directory of c:\

18.09.2009 00:25 3 756 064 768 hiberfil.sys

Now I guess we'll just wait and see if it had any effect.