PSPx7 slow

[brucet]

I've suddenly got an issue with PSPx7 going slow on opening a file. From the time from clicking on a file and seeing the preview has gone from less than a second to 4 or 7 seconds. Any idea on what may have changed?

regards

[hartpaul]

Wow!! You must have a supercharged computer
Windows 7 laptop. With small jpg image.
I do not have image files associated with PSP so cannot double click them to start the program with image on the workspace.
But I can right click the image and select which version of PSP to open with.
My results
First start 2 min and 10 sec
Close and redo - second start 13 seconds

Using Windows 8.1
second start 11 sec

It appears that the first time you open PSP it must take time to read files into some temporary storage area so that if you close PSP and then reopen it it does not have to read all those foles again and so opens much faster.

[brucet]

A clarification.

I have PSPx7 running on a 64bit win 8.1 laptop computer. 8 gig ram. (From a fresh start PSPx7 takes approx 10-20 seconds to start. If PSPx7 has already been running and I start it again it takes 5-10 seconds. So starting PSPx7 is not an issue).

With PSPx7 already running I hit Open. Click on a file. This normally takes 1-2 seconds, or less, for the preview to show and about 2-4 seconds if I click OK to open the file. However it suddenly was taking much longer to open the preview and then longer still to open the file.

My hard drive is getting full and has 'only' 70gig of space on it. So last night I copied approx 100gig over to a back up drive. Deleted that 100 gig from the hard drive. Done a fresh boot. Now my previews are back to normal. SO? So it seems an almost full hard drive is the issue. Why is it so? I'm also running Photoline and it hasn't change it's speed. So it's not a computer issue as such. For some reason PSPx7 need elbow room to operate efficiently.

regards

[JoeB]

While providing more hard drive space seems to have helped with your issue, another problem could be that you might need to defrag the drive. I think Windows should do that automatically but it might not hurt to check and see if a manual defrag is required.

[brucet]

Thanks JoeB. I often do a disk clean up which includes defrag. I think, like a few other PSP issues, that it all comes down to inefficient coding and is also suffering due to updates/changes that aren't helping.

Just every now and again PSP seems to get its finger in the wrong hole and ties itself in knots.

regards

[JoeB]

Thanks JoeB. I often do a disk clean up which includes defrag. I think, like a few other PSP issues, that it all comes down to inefficient coding and is also suffering due to updates/changes that aren't helping.

Just every now and again PSP seems to get its finger in the wrong hole and ties itself in knots.

regards

Well, I wouldn't disagree that inefficient coding is likely an issue with Corel's PSP versions. On the other hand, it shouldn't be too surprising because I suspect they simply built on the original JASC program they purchased and, to keep the cost down well below Adobe's product while trying to add competitive features, we are looking at a somewhat "cobbled together" program - i.e., JASC's original coding with additions by Corel engineers rather than a complete re-do of the original program. Given the price point, and the fact that for the most part PSP does what most people would want or need, I don't complain a lot about a bit of slowness or similar issues. EXCEPT that they really do have to fix the X8 SP1 patch. Somehow they let a real glitch - rather than just a bit of an annoyance - happen with the coding in a way we haven't seen for ages. They get that fixed and - again given the price point and features - PSP is great value for money. JMHO, of course.

[brucet]

The strange thing is that one of my pet peeves seems to have gone. Saving once took several seconds. So slow that my old i3 laptop was quicker. (The slow saving of files and the painfully slow adjustment layers were two of the main reasons I flipped over to Photoline). Now saving is almost instant.
I neglected to say that my photo laptop is never used for the internet. Well the other day, in a hotel, I turned on the internet/wifi to do a quick job. Being too lazy to get out my internet laptop. Well during that time Windows update downloaded. When I tried to turn off the laptop I had to wait for windows to update. Well the update failed. Gave a message that it was uninstalling what it couldn't install! This ended up taking several hours and a lot of cursing. Well in the end it all worked out. Now PSP saves very fast. Loaded files very slow, until I deleted files from the hard drive.

I'm now suspecting my 'strange' behavior of PSP has something to do with the aborted update of windows.

regards

[JoeB]

My personal preference is that I don't let Windows - or any other program - do automatic updates. I prefer to wait and see if the internet starts buzzing about issues with various updates to things before I will consider updating, which I do manually if and when I decide to do so. That's another reason I won't move from Win8.1 to 10 - I understand you can't stop updates from happening.

[brucet]

JoeB I have all automatic updates turned OFF. Regardless of whos software it is. But because I don't use my photo editing laptop for the internet I hadn't bothered to turn them off. I got caught. But rest assured they are off now.

What ever the Windows update did or didn't do it scrabbled some of PSP's brain. Some good, some bad. The bad I seem to have resolved. The good I ain't touching.

regards

[JoeB]

Glad to see that PSP is now working better for you - regardless of how it happened!

[brucet]

I spoke too soon. For no known reason, and no known changes on my part, PSPx7 has once again reverted to a very slow file opening. PSPx7 starts up in 4-6 seconds. My issue is when I click on Open, click on a file, it takes 5 - 20 seconds for the preview to appear. This was like it last week. Then it worked fine. Now it has once again slowed to a crawl.

regard

[JoeB]

I spoke too soon. For no known reason, and no known changes on my part, PSPx7 has once again reverted to a very slow file opening. PSPx7 starts up in 4-6 seconds. My issue is when I click on Open, click on a file, it takes 5 - 20 seconds for the preview to appear. This was like it last week. Then it worked fine. Now it has once again slowed to a crawl.regard

I hate to sound like a broken record but that sounds like a system specific issue to me, particularly given it seems to be intermittent and at least once corrected itself. When I have PSP X7 already open, the first time I click on File>Open it takes about 3 seconds for the preview window with the thumbnails to open that lets me select the file I want to open. After that it takes 1 to less than 2 seconds for the preview to open. And when I click OK after selecting a 16mb image it opens within about 3 seconds, sometimes less. I don't have a very powerful system (HP motherboard tower, Intel Core 2, 4gb ram), but I do have lots of hard drive empty space (more than 1TB free on my main 2TB data drive, and just over 200GB free on my 600GB system drive which also holds my program files of course).

I would add that I rarely use File>Open but tend to open images from the Manage tab, partly because it provides larger thumbnails than the Open window does and I find the navigation pane much more convenient to use.

[brucet]

JoeB I'm guessing it does have something to do the system. However it changes without any system changes. I'm opening 180meg files so size may also be an issue. But then again the 180meg is a constant. Maybe it's a cache issue.

regards

[hartpaul]

Does it have the same slow down when you drag and drop a copy into the work space from a desktop folder.