I recently installed Mathematica standard on my Windows 7 machine at work and the UI is very sluggish even though it is a very powerful machine with a lot of spare memory. Calculation seems rapid, but actually typing the commands is slow. For example, when I click to create a new cell there will be a pause. Similarly moving a cursor around an expression with the arrow keys results in long pauses and then the cursor will suddenly jump five or six characters away. Other applications I have running, for example, Microsoft Word, behave normally and have no such unresponsive behavior. Also, my machine at home which is Windows XP with the Home edition of Mathematica is just fine and has no sluggishness.
Is this a problem with Mathematica on Windows 7 or is there some deeper problem?
I have figured out that the problem is related to security in Windows 7. If I run Mathematica “As Administrator” there is no editing pauses and animations run relatively smoothly.
I am not sure why there should be a difference between running as a user or administrator. Perhaps it is some kind of prioritization mechanism in Windows. In any case it seems like a serious problem to me that the application slows down becomes less responsive when run as a normal user.
There’s likely a difference in preferences. Resetting Mathematica’s configuration should have removed any differences in Mathematica between users, so the most likely place to look for differences would be in Windows.
Assuming my previous suggestions did not reveal any useful information, I would check what priority Mathematica is running with on your machine. Perhaps it runs with a slower priority on different accounts.