PSP Ultimate 2018 New Image Dialog

[DaveQ]

Hi all,
I have searched this board for an answer, but no luck, as yet.
On both my PC's, either clicking on the New Icon or using Ctrl>N to open the New Image Dialog takes incredibly long. About 40-50sec in my case.
Windows 10 Task Manager shows a huge spike in CPU, Memory and HDD activity during this time.
This is fairly recent, as this problem did not exist when PSP Ult. 2018 was first installed.
I have cleared the Cache in Preferences, but to no avail.
Has anyone else experienced this?

[hartpaul]

I have a similar thing . When I boot up of a morning , for the first hour or two I can have any program I am using at that time hang for between 15 - 90 seconds and then continue without any further problems for 10 or 20 minutes or sometimes 5 freezes in 5 minutes. Seems random.
I have taken to having Task manager open , then click on Performance tab and at the bottom click on Resource monitor. I have bothe of these open and minimised and when I get a freeze I can open click the Resource monitor and see in red which program is currently freezing. This has occurred with PSP, firefox, Irfanview, wordpad and any number of programs I happen to be working on.
In those early sessions I may have 2 or more freezes as I type in this forum. Then after some time (hours) the number of freezes reduces and now after 8 hours (some sleep periods in that time) I can do everything without interruption or freezes.
I got the vague impression that by looking at the resource monitor and task manager the freezes did not last as long.

Edit: Discovered that my hard drive was failing. Managed to clone the drive across and no freezes with newer drive.

[LeviFiction]

DaveQ does it start up any faster if you're not connected to the internet? I notice a slight slow down when I'm online vs when I'm offline in the New dialog starting. And the fact that it started randomly with no updates to PSP makes me think it's at least slightly related to the store.

[Kathy_9]

Yes, I have experienced the same lag; usually between 20 to 50 seconds in PSP2018 with Open -> New. After the first new document it seems to speed up. This slowness does not exist with PSPX9 which opens instantly.

[DaveQ]

DaveQ does it start up any faster if you're not connected to the internet? I notice a slight slow down when I'm online vs when I'm offline in the New dialog starting. And the fact that it started randomly with no updates to PSP makes me think it's at least slightly related to the store.

LeviFiction, when I am offline, the New dialog starts up quickly, around 5 seconds. My online download speed is 50 Mbps and upload 25Mbps, so I don't know what PSP is looking for on the web?

[JoeB]

These complaints seem strange to me. When I start PSP 2018 for the first time it opens after about 10 seconds and I can immediately hit the New icon and the dialogue opens instantly and the new document is created just as fast when I click OK. The program starts faster after the first opening.

Hartpaul, your issues are obviously not PSP related as they seem (from your post) to occur with various programs. You must be having system issues if you're having freezes like that happening with various programs. As to "rebooting" in the morning, my computers have always been run 24/7/365, only getting restarts by me in various circumstances, like when I install or uninstall a program or if the system slows down considerably after doing some pretty system/cpu intensive work that, for some reason, slows things down. However, I run desktop machines, so I guess for those running laptops then constant running is not really a viable option.

[Ken Berry]

Thanks for that JoeB -- I get the same quick reactions as you. I don't use New very often, but tried it yesterday after first reading the opening posts of this thread. After PSP 2018 first opened and was ready for business, going through the New routine produced the first dialogue box almost immediately, and again, like you, the new image/document is created almost instantly after I hit the OK button. I didn't post this at the time as I was a bit embarrassed, thinking that somehow or other I had missed something or had read the opening post or done something wrong. So it is something of a relief to have someone else get the same quick reaction.

My computer is permanently connected to the internet, though I turn the computer off every night. After rebooting, the first start of PSP is very slow, despite Corel claims that it has speeded up. It takes 90 - 100 seconds before PSP is ready to use. Subsequent restarts during the same boot session take only around 10 seconds. I got much the same times with X9 and X8 as I do now with 2018.

[LeviFiction]

I'm convinced this has to do with getting updated store information from Corel's servers. Essentially, if Corel's servers are ever slow to respond or your network connection is slow, the New Image dialog will be delayed in opening. That's all speculation and I could be way off. But that's what it looks like to me. What causes that delay, if Corel's servers have just been overtaxed, or if our ability to connect to them has been hampered while others have not. I don't know. But with the Template options being built into the New Image dialog it's the only thing that makes sense to my tiny mind.

[JoeB]

I'm presently running stuff that will continue overnight, and may be doing similar tomorrow. But if I remember after that perhaps I'll turn off my computer one night and then see how PSP reacts when I start it the next day.

[DaveQ]

Thanks JoeB, It will be interesting to see what results you get.

[Ken Berry]

FWIW, I have just turned my computer on for the day, and thought I might do some accurately timed experiments on opening PSP with internet running and turned off. I might add that I had a Win 10 update last night before I turned the computer off, but doubt that that would have affected these results by anything much.

With the internet running, my first start-up of PSP took exactly 62 seconds (timed with a digital stop watch). After closing PSP and restarting it again, it took 20 seconds to be ready for use.

I turned the internet modem off and rebooted. Startup time without the internet was a speedy 25 seconds. A restart took 10 seconds.

[theavy]

I tried a couple things this morning on my laptop, and noticed that PSP 2018 appears to be doing some 'busy work' after it initially loads, and there is a definite delay when I try to open a new image. However, on one test, I later closed PSP, waited a while, started it up again, and waited until the disk activity light settled down (45 seconds to a minute). I then clicked the New Image button, and the dialog box popped up almost instantaneously.

Tom

[Kathy_9]

Ken - were you timing the launch of PSP or the launch of a new image (Ctrl+N)?

[Ken Berry]

Those figures were for the launch of PSP itself. As I said in my first post above, launch of the New Image is almost instantaneous and consistently so.

[DaveQ]

I tried a couple things this morning on my laptop, and noticed that PSP 2018 appears to be doing some 'busy work' after it initially loads, and there is a definite delay when I try to open a new image. However, on one test, I later closed PSP, waited a while, started it up again, and waited until the disk activity light settled down (45 seconds to a minute). I then clicked the New Image button, and the dialog box popped up almost instantaneously.

Tom

Basically the same as what i am seeing Tom. I did as LeviFiction suggested and went offline before opening PSP 2018, and the startup and new image loading times were very quick.
My internet connection is very fast - 50 Mbps Fibre, but I am thinking that PSP is looking for Templates, etc. in the store which are displayed on the New Image dialog.