ArcGIS Pro unable to save user settings and program interface hang-time
Having re-read the case details & your correspondence here, I'm isolating two concerns that I would consider separate problems:
- Performance Problems interacting with the application's UI;
- Inability to save user-specific customization settings that should persist from Pro session to Pro session (list of Recent Projects, Dark Mode, etc.)
These issues may both be related to the fact that your Roaming User Profile is being saved on a network share, but I can't say that confidently. What I can say is that I'm pretty confident the following recommendations I'm about to make should help with resolving the emphasized bullet point above.
A large majority of all user-specific customization settings you can make in Pro are going to be saved to a user.config file. This file is saved in a user's Roaming profile in the following directory:
%APPDATA%\Esri\ArcGISPro_StrongName_<string_of_alphanumeric_characters>\3.x.0.0\user.config
Normally this wouldn't be a huge issue but, for organizations that direct their users' Roaming profiles to be stored on the network and exert fine-tuned control over the shares that store them, odd problems like what you're describing can be encountered. Hate writing 'odd' as I'm not trying to sweep concerns like these under the rug, but a whole slew of new considerations arise due to a migration like this that're extremely difficult to account for all aspects of. Are they SMB or Samba shares holding the profiles? What type of Group Policy settings could be interfering? Are there any anti-virus clients or security suite packages that slow down the read/writing speed requests when interacting with these shares? What if none of these are concerns & the true problem lies in the machine's connection speed and/or latency to this share? Or what if a combination of these concerns are contributing?
That's all conjecture and not necessarily helpful, I realize, but I make mention of it because the sudden inability to successfully write to your user.config could potentially be something affected by any of those questions (or ones I didn't consider when writing this response).
So something that I think will help, but is dependent on your IT staff.... would they allow you to save your user.config file (that's currently being saved to the default location of your Roaming Profile over the network) to a Local Profile saved on-disk on your machine instead?
If the answer is yes, I'd ask that you or your IT staff navigate to the following section of your registry in RegEdit: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\ESRI\ArcGISPro\Settings
Once there and at the bottom of the subkey list, you should see the following three subkeys:
An elaboration on what these subkeys are:
For your specific problem, I'd recommend setting UserConfigMovedToRoaming to '0', so that it'll save your user.config in the path specified under UserConfigLocationLocal (which should be on-disk on your machine, ideally) instead of where it's currently being saved under UserConfigLocationRoaming. Making this change isn't going to move any other part of your User Profile locally; it's only changing the save location for your user.config file. As an aside, both UserConfigMovedToRoaming & UserConfigLocationLocal can be modified to point to different locations outside of %APPDATA% & %LOCALAPPDATA%, respectively, if the defaults don't suit your needs for whatever reason. That may be pertinent & helpful if your IT staff is also backing up your Local User Profile (or not using it at all) to a network share.
This concern in general is currently encompassed by the following Enhancement & was implemented because of it:
ENH-000137053 - Allow the Specification of a Local or Roaming Profile Installation Option to Avoid Performance Problems Experienced in some Environments After ArcGIS Pro's user.config File was Migrated from Local to Roaming Storage
Although this enhancement is still listed as being Open and/or Under Consideration, it's going to be marked as Implemented in the coming days to point to the solution above that I just described. Regarding documentation for these registry keys, that screenshot I posted above outlining their usage was from an internal page where we're staging these updates - at or before 3.1 Release, they'll be pushed to our public page here to fill the gap: https://github.com/esri/arcgis-pro-sdk/wiki/ArcGIS-Pro-Registry-Keys
Want to reiterate that I don't believe this potential solution for your user customization problems will resolve the performance issues being seen elsewhere in the client - would be pleasantly surprised if they did! You'll need to engage further with Support on those concerns if they continue to persist, but things I'd recommend checking in that regard prior to or during engagement with Support would be:
- Are Projects that users in your organization are making/working on also being saved directly on the network? Or are they being saved locally on-disk?
- Does any data those projects contain/reference load that data from network locations, or are they being sourced locally?
- Does your organization use OneDrive? If so, do any of the above directories from the first two bullet points have backups made regularly during working hours?
- Are there any anti-virus or security suite packages that could be combing through any of the above directories where data, projects, etc. are being read & written from?
I'm still subscribed to this post so please don't hesitate to report back with findings when you have them. Finger's crossed this is it!
