I have been troubleshooting an Office/Excel issue for days now and I am hoping that someone might be able to shed some light on the matter (this really is a question about the 32bit emulator mode, just hear me out).
I have migrated a user from Windows XP x86 w/ Office 2007 to Windows 7 Ent x64 w/ Office 2010 x86.
The user accesses an excel spreadsheet that is about 14MB (it's an XLSB file, and links to approx 30 workbooks). The workbook is also very heavy on functions. It contains no VBA code or macro's.
On Windows XP when this file opens, it takes a matter of seconds for the workbook to open and have all the cells recalculated based on the links (recalculation happens automatically when the file is opened).
Now that the user is on Windows 7 x64, it is taking several minutes for the file to open/calculate (calculation is what takes most of the time). During the calculation phase, the CPU spikes to 100% and the PC is unusable. I have made sure all the linked files are good, and all linked files are also XLSB.
I am stumped as to what else could be causing the slowness, and have to think it is related to Office running in 32 bit compatability mode on the 64 bit OS.
If anyone can comment on the performance of applications running in 32bit compatibility mode, and maybe even point me at some resources, I would appreciate it. Even more, if anyone has any other recommendations of what I can try, it would be appreciated.
Thanks