Windows Herd Slow

[lvismer]

Hi

I have a client who runs a Windows machine and using WAMP with a Laravel application (default Laravel 10) takes 6seconds and even more to load any page in the application.

I was hoping that Herd was our solution. But using Herd for windows the response on any page is still the same. It is like the browser sits and waits (almost a resolving issue).

For others using Herd on Windows how is the response times for a Laravel application, is it snappy, ie 500ms or so?

Then is anyone experiencing the same on windows, and how did you solve the issue? I have the same issue on two different clients, with two different machines and setups. It makes Laravel almost unusable on Windows.

Any other pointers I can try. I'm wondering how I can test the DNS and mysql issue to make sure the bottleneck for waiting is not their.

Thanks for any help and insights.

[mpociot]

Microsoft Defender seems to be a common performance issue. You can try and exclude the Herd folder (~/.config/Herd) as well as your site paths and see if this speeds things up.

For me, the first request after starting Herd is always a bit slower and then it speeds up.

[lvismer]

@mpociot Thanks Marcel, will ask the client to try that. I know the client is using Bitdefender. I expected the first request to be slower but every request takes at least 6seconds, typically almost as if the google chrome cannot find the page, with the location spinner going.

[mauricekindermann]

I have tried this as well, didn't change anything. I still get 1500-3000+ms on windows, and 80-150ms on mac.

[RomkaLTU]

Experience same problem TTFB is 2s, I tried disabling defender, no dice. Unusable at this point, need to switch to WSL.

[RomkaLTU]

I created issue, this related to InertiaJS, maybe something todo with node, everythink is fine when rendering regular blade or serving API.

[mauricekindermann]

Yes unusable for me still, all this time later. Still working on a little mac laptop rather than my 3 screen windows beast. Crazy.

[pschilly]

Has there been any movement on this issue? I have seemingly randomly started having similar issues... Was working fine up to this morning - now I get a [2024-11-10 13:40:19] local.ERROR: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded {"exception":"[object] (Symfony\\Component\\ErrorHandler\\Error\\FatalError(code: 0): Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded at C:\Users\patri\Herd\heavy\vendor\symfony\finder\Iterator\SortableIterator.php:51)` on every request (running Filament on Herd) - a standard install seems to work without issue though...

[pschilly]

For clarity - here is the full error stack: https://flareapp.io/share/bP9obBo5

Additionally - the exact same codebase that was working fine before - still is working fine via Laravel Sail on WSL2

I have tried the following:

• Complete fresh install of Herd
• Complete fresh install of the codebase from repo
• Complete fresh install of the codebase to an entirely different location on the computer (seperate physical drive)

Nothing seems to correct this issue :|

[mauricekindermann]

Yes I've tried reinstalling everything a few times, nothing fixes it. I have to imagine we are unlucky in some regard, surely it is not this slow on all PCs?

[ClaraLeigh]

Hey friends,

Here is some performance tips for windows (I'd PR this to docs but there is no github repo for it).

File System Operations

tl;dr reduce how much you are talking to the filesystem as much as possible. Your hdd speeds aren't the problem, php is

• Testing: Use DB transactions around your seeders (if you're seeding) to reduce file updates
• Debugbar: change the driver to redis from file, you'll see loads decrease by half using this alone
• Defender, disable it for the herd .config folder and your project folder

.env file changes:

CACHE_STORE=file
SESSION_DRIVER=redis

Note: weirdly I notice faster speeds when using cache file over redis. I need to come back and investigate that quirk later. You may be different.

PHP setting changes

Update both PHP and MySQL configs to tune for your system.
I have a beefy system so here is my main changes.

First in herd settings change your memory to -1 to disable the limit
Then in the php.ini - update values, don't add

realpath_cache_size = 16M
realpath_cache_ttl = 120

MySQL Changes

my.cnf - mysql, I add all of these to the end. I have a 100+gb ram so decrease these values for your system

innodb_buffer_pool_size=38G
innodb_log_file_size=4G
thread_cache_size=256
table_open_cache=20000
max_connections=300
innodb_io_capacity=10000
tmp_table_size=1G
max_heap_table_size=256M
innodb_log_buffer_size=128M
performance_schema=0

Can we do more?

I suspect there is a lot more little tweaks that can likely do. I'll try to force myself to stay on windows for a little while as I know these things will annoy me until I find a way to fix it

[pschilly]

Well - this worked... Or seems to have.

Still WAY slower than it was originally - but it does load now...

[ClaraLeigh]

yeah honestly the problem is php in windows, see this: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=80695

Looking around it looks like it's not the only windows quirk that slows things down

as said, I'll force myself to use windows for a month or so and I'll post back with anything else I find, oddly I like these sorts of challenges

[ClaraLeigh]

My experiment with windows has come to an end, never beat the slow first load which is what mainly has me back on my mac. It just doesn't seem to like creating lots of small files during the vite dev build.

If someone ever cracks that nut, hmu

[pschilly]

Interesting... I'll give those steps a whirl and see what I find out.

[MGeurts]

To me, slow performance on Windows machines is always due to Microsoft Defender.
Excluding the Herd folder and my Development Folder, solved all performance issues.

Thanks ClaraLeigh!

[mauricekindermann]

Still unusable in 2025. My mac laptop is near instant, and windows, even with all of the above, has a minimum 2 second load per page.

[ClaraLeigh]

After the first page load, mine would be a lot faster. My bottleneck on windows was narrowed down to vite asset serving.
I am back on my mac now but 2secs every time might be something like defender not respecting your rules (which is known to happen)

[mauricekindermann]

Empty controllers are around 2s. Livewire closer to 4s.

I've done all of the above several times over the last 18 months (perodically).

I don't code on Windows anymore beacuse of this, my M.2 Macbook Air is around 80-120ms per request. Shame!

[avazquez-bit]

Windows is just an OS for playing... Only for playing... I develop in linux and had no problems with nothing about coding or performance, I started programing in windows, when my team invited to me to use linux I was not for sure, but now I pretty sure to neveer back to windows for any work... Just for playing, in this scenario is the best (I think) :)

[mauricekindermann]

Windows is just an OS for playing... Only for playing... I develop in linux and had no problems with nothing about coding or performance, I started programing in windows, when my team invited to me to use linux I was not for sure, but now I pretty sure to neveer back to windows for any work... Just for playing, in this scenario is the best (I think) :)

Unhelpful argument and irrelevant to this thread. I've developed on windows for 15 years without speed issues, mostly raw PHP, but occasionally Zend, WordPress, and Cake. Laravel is the first PHP framework I've ever had run slow on windows, which is why I now can only use my Macbook for Laravel.

[SturmB]

I'm afraid I have to agree. I was hoping to abandon WSL and Sail for my Laravel dev work, but every request takes almost five seconds to complete. Back to WSL.

[chandra10207]

Adding Custom rules on windows firewall helped me:

Create a Firewall Rule:

Open Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security.

Go to Outbound Rules (or Inbound if incoming access matters).

Click New Rule > Choose Custom > Click Next.

Under Program, choose your app (or All Programs).

Under Protocol and Ports, click Next.

Under Scope, in the Remote IP address section:

Choose These IP addresses.

Add the resolved IP of the development.test. i.e 127.0.0.1

Under Action, choose Allow the connection.

Apply it to the appropriate profiles (Domain, Private, Public).

Name the rule and click Finish.

[mauricekindermann]

Tried that just now, still 1500-3000ms per page request on Windows, and 80-150ms on mac.

[chandra10207]

Try to disable windows firewall for both private and public network and see whether its with firewall or something else.
Once disabled firewall its faster and then i add that rule and re-enabled the firewall.

[mauricekindermann]

I have tried that before, I've tried it again just now, same issue. So firewall is likely not the culprit.

I've tried profiling with xDebug before, but herd injects so many files into each request it was impossible to teaase out what is going on.

I am not a dumb dumb working on trash either. Running WAMP or Laragon with a plain PHP site is faster then my macbook running herd and laravel. It's only Windows + Herd + Laravel that is slow beyond use.

I really hope I can work from windows one day, because it is a lot more enjoyable.

[mauricekindermann]

For what it's worth I did some more research and I didn't find anything useful at this point.

• Disable Windows Defender or create exclusionsfor Herd (no improvement on my end)
• Try different PHP config tweaks (nothing made a consquential difference for me)
• Switch back to Laragon, feasible, annoying, and faster but not lightning fast like Herd on Mac, so wouldn't bother here either
• Buy a new computer and switch operating systems - sadly and ironically this is the only solution that is guaranteed to work

I hope there is more to be done here one day.

[maxresnikoff]

My requests take around 70ms, but after enabling xdebug, my requests were taking 2s+.
Once disabled, it returned back to MacOS speeds. It might be worth checking if any PHP extensions in php.ini are the culprit for the high request overhead.

[mauricekindermann]

I could kiss you. THIS WAS IT! It was definitely very slow on launch, and I installed it to try and tease out what might be the bottleneck, but now it's much faster and disabling it was the fix I needed. Thankyou!

My settings I had to comment out and restart:

# zend_extension=C:\Program Files\Herd\resources\app.asar.unpacked\resources\bin\xdebug\xdebug-8.3.dll
# xdebug.mode=profile
# xdebug.start_with_request=yes
# xdebug.start_upon_error=yes
# xdebug.output_dir=C:\Users\[username]\xdebug\profiles
# xdebug.profiler_output_name=cachegrind.out.%p

It's still not as fast as my Macbook, I get about 150ms-200ms total for a speciifc page, and windows gets about 300ms-400ms, but it's totally usable now and it wasn't before. Now I can at least upgrade my machine knowing it will make a difference :)

[mauricekindermann]

Clearly I need to upgrade my system regardless, because if you're seeing 70ms that's 5-6x what I'm seeing. Mind sharing your CPU/RAM/GPU specs? That would give everyone a new benchmark to aim towards for system requirements for fast develoment. Cheers mate :)

[maxresnikoff]

Glad to hear!

Mind you, I am not running a Laravel project - it is a custom PHP REST API framework I have made, which might be why my requests might be faster than Laravel due to the lack of Laravel overhead(?)

Regardless, here are my specs (overkill for software dev, but is also my main gaming pc):

• Intel(R) Core(TM) i(-14900K
• 64GB Ram
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER
• NVME M.2 Hard drives (totalling 7TB)

[mauricekindermann]

Ahh ok, that explains it - pure PHP projects for me are basically instant. Thanks for sharing regardless!