As a first step, please review the "Where to Install LinkFixer Advanced" section of the LinkFixer Advanced User's Guide (starting at about page 20). The relative locations of the data you are processing, the machine that is running LinkFixer Advanced, and the location of the database can have a very significant effect on the speed at which LinkFixer Advanced can process your files and links.


The above presumes that you are connecting LinkFixer Advanced to your SQL Server instead of the SQLite that is installed with LinkFixer. If this is not the case, you should make that change immediately. Using SQL Server is probably the single most important factor that will improve processing speed. When LinkFixer Advanced is connected to SQL Server, it will automatically begin processing files using multiple threads. This will dramatically improve processing speed for each instance of LinkFixer Advanced that you are running, as well as open the door to using multiple instances of LFA to process your files at the same time.


Processing files and links that are located on a SharePoint (or OpenText) server is always slower than processing files and links located on a shared drive on a local server. This is true because, in order for LinkFixer Advanced to modify a file on SharePoint, or access the links, that file must be downloaded from the server, processed, and pushed back to the server. SharePoint Online (Office 365) is slower than SharePoint on premise, as a result of the additional latency associated with passing the data over the Internet.


If you are running LinkFixer Advanced on a physical machine, the following are some of the factors that can affect processing speed:

  • The number of processors that are available on the machine.
  • The amount of available memory.
  • The speed of the network card.
  • Any type of anti-virus software, including Windows Defender, that could try to scan files as LinkFixer Advance accesses them.
  • Other software on the machine that is using available CPU and memory.


If you are running LinkFixer Advanced on a virtual machine, here are some things that might be affecting your processing speed:

  • The type (brand) of virtual machine you are using
  • The number of processors you have allocated to the VM
  • Whether those processors are dedicated or “on demand”
  • If your processors are “on demand”, what else is running on that server, and what is the priority given to the VM that LinkFixer Advanced is running on?
  • The amount of memory allocated to the VM
  • Any type of anti-virus software that might be running on the VM or on your network.


On the network side, here are some things that might be affecting throughput:

  • The type and speed of network card
  • Any “flow-control”, “load-balancing”, or other software that might be restricting the amount or speed of data transfer
  • Any type of anti-virus software that might be running on the network
  • The base speed of the network
  • The amount of other traffic on the network (which can vary by time of day)
  • The speed of the NAS
  • The amount of other traffic on the NAS (which can vary by time of day)


There is also a possibility that there is a hidden variable in the data sets you are testing. Here are some things in the data that can affect processing speed:

  • The average size of the files
  • The number of links per file
  • The ratio of good to broken links in the files
  • The file type(s) being processed. For example, processing of InDesign files is much slower than other file types because LinkFixer Advanced must process the files using the InDesign application.