For our various office networks with Dentrix clients and Dentrix server (we are running standard Dentrix, not Enterprise edition and not Ascend), here are a list of things that are part of our provisioning checklist that we do to speed them up:

Disable LLMNR

LLMNR (Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution) is a protocol based on the Domain Name System packet format that allows both IPv4 and IPv6 hosts to perform name resolution for hosts on the same local link. It allows host name resolution without the requirement of a DNS server. While it’s in theory useful, in practice we have not needed on our networks for at least a decade now. And in certain scenarios disabling it both speeds up our network and slightly improves security in the case of an incident. Here is how to disable LLMNR, and some research that we’ve discovered.

Reduce Windows Defender’s scope

How many times has your computer come to a crawl, and when you open Task Manager it’s because the “Antimalware Service Executable” is running at 100%? This is Windows Defender, and it’s unstoppable. Literally, you cannot stop it. It gets to decide when to run, and often it feels like the best time is right in the middle of the day, when patients are in the chair.

To help reduce its impact, we’ve started to exclude a few applications from it, like so:

Control Panel > System and Security > Security and Maintenance > Virus Protection
Virus and Threat Protection Settings > Manage Settings
Add or remove exclusions
Add Process > MsMpEng.exe
Add Folder > C:\Program Files (x86)\Dentrix

Add any others that are getting caught in its net that run all the time (e.g. your imaging software).

Disable fetching of start menu web content

The Start Menu takes a long time to open because it fetches web content before popping up. To disable web search in the Start Menu, open PowerShell as an administrator and run this:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search" -Name "BingSearchEnabled" -Value 0 -Type DWord

Then reboot.

Source for this one.

Disable Fast Startup

This is a new one for us (at the time of this writing). A vendor was training the team on a new piece of software. The workstation they picked was running extremely slowly. She said, “have you restarted it and not just shut it down? I’ve been told that you have to restart it”. Then she proceeded to show that the machine claimed it had not been restarted in 2 weeks (when it had been shut down almost every night)!

After researching this, it turns out that, in an attempt to speed up Windows start, on some machines Windows will save the OS state on shut down, then reload that same state (memory leaks and all) on startup. This is called Fast Startup, and it’s been a part of Windows since Windows 8.

We’ve started to disable Fast Startup entirely. It’s a Control Panel > Power setting, and you can find screenshots about how to do so online. I’m not sure yet what kind of impact this will have, especially on those perniciously slow machines, but hopefully it will be a positive one!

I’ll continue to add and revise this as new tricks come up. If you have other ones, please feel free to comment.

For years now, whenever we swapped out a desktop and needed Dentrix reinstalled, our staff would call Dentrix Support to have them do the installation manually. This is because, sometime 5-10 years ago, when you double-clicked on “setup.exe” it just wouldn’t work. It often complained about missing components, .NET runtime versions, or similar. I think Crystal Reports was a frequent culprit. This was a far cry from when we bought the practice >15 years ago, when I could install Dentrix without much issue by putting in the CD(!) into the tray and running setup.

Today, I needed to get Dentrix set up on a remote computer to test some things. But I had no interest in calling Support to make this happen. I was determined, determined I say, to get this done myself.

Instructions

Note that these instructions were written for Dentrix 24 with Windows 10 Pro (10.0.19045 build 19405). I’m certain that they will break in the future. All of the steps below need to take place on the workstation.

1. Navigate to \\[server]\DTXCommon\Installs\
2. Copy the 24.1.1.17965 folder (or whatever is the latest one you see) to the workstation. I also copied the sibling files over to the Workstation as well, for good measure; not sure if that’s required or not. So, if this is what my server contained in \\[server]\DTXCommon\Installs\ :
   
   then this is what my workstation contained in my working folder:
   
   WARNING: even with the reduced number of files copied, this still required 3.2GB on disk.
3. Try to run 24.1.1.17965\setup.exe . It will probably fail with an error about Crystal Reports.
4. So, try to run Crystal Reports installation first. Find it in 24.1.1.17965\ISSetupPrerequisites\{CrystalReports-13-0-32bit-Prereq}\CRRuntime_32bit_13_0.msi . But, for me, this failed with Error 1904. Module C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\Crystal Reports for .NET Framework 4.0\Common\SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0\win32_x86\crtslv.dll failed to register. HRESULT -2147010895. Contact your support personnel. If it works for you and you don’t get this error, great; you can probably go back to step 3 and run the setup.exe for Dentrix again.
5. After digging around the Internet, I found this answer on StackOverflow, which gave me the hint I needed. We have to reinstall the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable package. I found that on Microsoft’s website. Note: be sure to download the 32-bit version, because that’s what Crystal Reports relies on here apparently.
6. When you try to install the Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable package, that may fail with an error if you already have one installed. I had to go to Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, and uninstall Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable (x64) 14.12.25810 first. After I did that, I rebooted, then worked backwards from here:
   • Installed Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable Package (32-bit version), per line 5 above
   • Installed Crystal Reports via the CRRuntime_32bit_13_0.msi file, per line 4 above
   • Installed Dentrix via the setup.exe, per line 3 above

Other notes

Using Dentrix Workstation over a TailScale VPN is significantly slower than using Remote Desktop to the server or another workstation. There must be a ton of synchronous round trip calls made within Dentrix, with the (not invalid, at the time it was created!) assumption that your server and your workstations will all be connected to a high-speed intranet network.