I have recently been suffering from some serious performance issues with ArcCatalog (taking 5+ minutes to open and close, slow geoprocessing, ect...). I tried all of the normal fixes such as restarting my machine, deleting the default ArcCatalog file, clearing the cache to no avail. Finally I tried reducing the amount of time geoprocessing results were stored as well as deleting old results (Catalog stores geoprocessing results up to 2 weeks by default) and this has fixed the performance issues.
In a typical day I run upwards of 30 unique geoprocessing tasks, the results of which are retained for 2 weeks eating up valuable resources. In order to remove old results open ArcCatalog and go to the Geoprocessing Menu then Results. In the Results window simply right click on a single geoprocessing result or group of results then select Remove All.
In order to reduce the amount of time results are stored again go to the Geoprocessing Menu and Geoprocessing Options. At the bottom of the Geoprocessing Options window in the Results Management section use the drop down to change the length of time for which results are saved.
Hope this helps,
Kyle Balke
Senior GIS Analyst
Geodata Services, Inc.
406.532.3239
