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3 replies Latest Post - 2012-11-04T22:14:27Z by SystemAdmin
Pinned topic SPSS 21 Slow start up in Windows 7
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I have SPSS 21 on a new 64bit Windows 7 PC with 16GB memory. SPSS takes 2.5 minutes to start and during this time the Windows eternity ring (new hour glass) is on show and the pc refuses to accept input from the keyboard or mouse. I also tried the 32 bit version on a five-year-old XP pc and startup takes 25 seconds. On both machines the antivirus is set to exclude the IBM directory. How can I get the startup time to reasonable times?
Updated on 2012-11-04T22:14:27Z at 2012-11-04T22:14:27Z by SystemAdmin
Re: SPSS 21 Slow start up in Windows 72012-10-28T02:23:45Z in response to SystemAdminThat's obviously longer than it should take to launch. My guess is that it is waiting for something that is not responding. If you watch the stats.exe and spssengine.exe processes in the Task Manager during launch, do they stop using cpu time and just sit there? Is it possible that you have a network license and a slow connection or server that is timing out? Or do you have a startup autoscript that might be misbehaving?
Re: SPSS 21 Slow start up in Windows 72012-11-04T21:59:10Z in response to SystemAdminThanks JonPeck, the stats.exe and spssengine.exe processes uses 0% until much time has past and the whole SPSS window comes to life. So that sounds like the network licence. I tried reapplying the licensing wizard but that had no effect. (It could be the same reason why when you click on Help under IBM SPSS and the link tries to open an IBM web page. This too takes an age before any help page is rendered.) Is there a way to make the system more usable so that it starts up and shows help in a reasonable time? If I close SPSS and then reopen it it usually happens immediately. But if some time has past until I open it again it takes a long time to open.
Re: SPSS 21 Slow start up in Windows 72012-11-04T22:14:27Z in response to SystemAdminIf you are using a network license, talk to your system admin to see why it is so slow. They would have a license server running somewhere on your network.
As for help, the help system is initialized when Statistics starts, but it is still slow the first time you access it. The CSR on the Help menu comes up much faster, if you need syntax help. Some people find it faster to access the help from the Internet at
via their browser or via the pdf version at
The content is the same.