HOW TO

Increase performance to make ArcMap start and run faster

Last Published: July 20, 2023

Summary

In some instances, ArcMap may take a long time to start and has poor performance in performing specific tasks.

Procedure

There are several hardware upgrades, system settings, storage setup, tool usage, monitoring, and maintenance routines that can be performed to increase the performance of ArcMap:

Hardware

System Settings

Software

  • Clear the local display cache in ArcMap. If the cache is retained instead of being cleared from one map to the next, there is a big performance hit. Refer to ArcMap: Managing your local display cache for more information on clearing the local display cache.
  • Check for any third-party tools. There are a lot of great third-party extensions out there, but unfortunately, we do not test or certify against them. Some can occasionally cause conflicts, so it is worth uninstalling these to see if the behavior persists.

Service Packs

Antivirus and Malware

Data

Storage

  • Create connections to directories containing data on the network at the lowest level possible.
  • Minimize the number of network connections to the server that are saved in an ArcMap document. A huge performance hit occurs if an MXD contains many network connections.
  • Remove old server connections after resourcing MXD layers to change the location ArcMap is pointing to. Refer to Problem: After resourcing SDE map layers, MXDs are slow to open for more information.

Tools

Monitoring Tools

Article ID:000008878

Software:
  • ArcMap 10 x

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