Update: PSP2018 App launch time degradation

[Nev]

Hi there,

Apologies for my lack of posts in the last couple of weeks. It has been super busy.

Since the release of PSP2018 last fall, some of you have experienced a gradual slow down of the app's launch time. I've personally reached out to these individuals to get more information hoping to assist our internal team to identify and replicate the root cause.

Long story short, after months of investigation, we've finally traced the root cause to Windows (with 99% certainty), which explains why it was so difficult for us replicate the problem. At the time of this writing, our internal team is undergoing additional testing and constructing a short-term fix to this problem. The long term and permanent fix will require the help of Microsoft.

I'll keep you posted as soon as more info is available.

Best,
nev

[juergen]

Good news. Will there be another patch for psp x9?

Regards, Jürgen

[flagpole]

Ooh I shall keep my eyes peeled.

[terrypin]

Pleased to hear you're on the case and hope it won't take too long to get PSP working briskly again.

[jimbeaux]

I'm having the slow startup / slow operation issues with PSP X9 -- does the PSP2018 issue affect it as well? Do you have an ETA to a patch?
Thanks.

[terrypin]

FWIW here's a summary of the recent behaviour and current status on my PC re startup times for PSP 2018.

As I reported in various other posts, I have had startup times ranging up to 5 minutes. It got to the point when I was regarding the occasional 10 seconds as 'good'. A ticketed discussion with Corel Support was a waste of time. My contact was unaware of the feedback in this thread (Thu Jan 25, 2018 7:45 pm) by 'nev', presumably by one of his colleagues. Worse, he continued to ignore that MS WU issue in his subsequent routine suggestions.

There was a sudden improvement when I uninstalled two of the '1709' updates, KB4056892 and KB4058702. But that was short-lived and I've had erratic results ever since.

Today I decided to return the reins to MS and allow all updates automatically. I now have 1709 (build 16299.192).

The first 2018 startup after a reboot took 105 secs. But the second and third dropped to a mere 7 secs.

I'm not going to try another for the time being!

P.S. I see that Intel and some other manufacturers have issued BIOS firmware updates to supplement the MS updates, and some are being reported as having flaws of their own.

[bruce1951]

Caveat! I stopped upgrading at PSPX8. Win 8.1.

I've read all the various threads on slow start up times. It has been happening with PSP for a number of versions now. But if it was 'just' PSP/Corel then why hasn't every user complained? If it was just Win 10 why hasn't every user complained? And if it has been an issue prior to Win 10 then my logic tells me it's not Win 10. (I would never have the patience to wait 1 or 2 minutes for any software to start, Those times takeme way back to the days I loaded software via cassette tapes!!!)

There's more to this issue than a 'bug' in either PSP or Win 10. As I noted elsewhere there must be 'another' common link in this on going saga. The evidence simply doesn't point just to PSP or Win 10. I have/had 3 computers with PSPx8 on them. Start up times varied between them all. Yet it was the exact same version/download of PSPx8. The first start up is always slowest. But never more than 30 second with much faster start up of subsequent start ups. 3 different versions of Wins never made much difference. In fact the old Win 7 laptop was by far the slowest for initial start up. But much faster on other tasks such as saving.

There has to be a conflict somewhere with other software that is causing an issue. A firewall maybe? Storage habits? Other software running at the same time?
The fact that a fresh start/install fixes the problem only initial tells me that something else is causing the problem.

bruce

[howiegoo]

I can confirm that the exact same behavior can be experienced in PaintShop Pro X7 as well. I upgraded from X7 to 2018 in the hopes that the super long startup time would be resolved but it actually seems much worse in 2018. If the splash screen is enabled then you can see 2018 hang at "Initializing Command Manager..." and X7 hangs at "Updating Cache Settings...". Whatever the problem is is happening at whatever those respective versions are trying to do at those points in their loading processes. Also strangely the first time you click on a menu in X7 it takes upwards of 20 seconds to expand but in 2018 it is instantaneous.

[hartpaul]

I have just finished a series of time tests for some versions of PSP (all 32 bit versions including PSP X9).
I have perhaps a unique setup in that I have numerous C drives with different operating system versions of Windows.
When I boot up I get a choice of which of the three C drives I wish to boot from. This means that the basic system is the same re speed of processor , amt of RAM, but may be some slight variations on the C drive speeds. Each version has AVG free, Malwarebytes, Spybot Search and Destroy , Zone Alarm and avoided any Defender interactions where available.

In each case I updated the C drive re software so that I would not get any interruptions re an update is available for Flash or some other programs. double clicked the desktop icon and started the timer. I stopped the timer when the new dialog box opened. I tested PSP X9, X2 and Jasc PSP 8.1.
The times were:

As we can see Jasc PSP 8.1 performed best in all windows versions with restarting times about 3 sec. This shows what can be done with a slimmed down program and no need to call home .
In almost all cases PSP X9 took longer to load as a bigger program. (X2 gave some odd results under Win 7).
The X versions had some slowing down under Win 10 1709 but not some of the extremes that others have reported.
Of the Win 10 versions 1607 and 1703 are much the same but there is about a 100% increase in times for the X versions under 1709.
Windows 8.1 seems to be the most efficient in times supporting Joe's decision to stay with it.

Would be interesting to see if those with very slow times switched to the security options I have and see what changes to their times occur. I suspect some of the other programs on other's computers may be running interference as well as internet access and speeds.
Only other things I could do would be to disable my internet access and do the whole series of tests again to see if there is internet slowing.

[terrypin]

hartpaul,

My optimism of last night after two successive 7 second startups of PSP 2018 has once again been shown as premature. Despite having had no PC reboot since then, my next two resuts were 85 and 45 secs.

And here are another nine tests, about half an hour later. Nothing was changed between each test. All are in seconds.
10, 16, 20, 27, 29 (then crashed), 26, Not in Task Mgr after 3 mins, 28, 48.

In contrast, PSP 8.1 continues to start in 6 secs.

This is Win 10 version 1709 on Intel Core i7 6700K (4.0GHz), 32 GB, using built-in Intel HD Graphics 530

Needless to say, I'm still using 8.1. However that has one serious problem, which was my motive for 'upgrading' to 2018. (Some obscure conflict with Macro Express Pro; macros fail to complete a paste into PSP 8, freezing both programs until I close PSP 8.)

So I'm not a happy customer.

It would be good to hear from Corel that this test data we're providing is actually being seen and used.

[Ozric]

Hi there,

Apologies for my lack of posts in the last couple of weeks. It has been super busy.

Since the release of PSP2018 last fall, some of you have experienced a gradual slow down of the app's launch time. I've personally reached out to these individuals to get more information hoping to assist our internal team to identify and replicate the root cause.

Long story short, after months of investigation, we've finally traced the root cause to Windows (with 99% certainty), which explains why it was so difficult for us replicate the problem. At the time of this writing, our internal team is undergoing additional testing and constructing a short-term fix to this problem. The long term and permanent fix will require the help of Microsoft.

I'll keep you posted as soon as more info is available.

Best,
nev

Look closely at what Microsoft changed with the Fall Creators Update. It seem that most everybody's troubles started just after this update.

[BjornB]

Hi guys!
I'm not sure this is going to help you, bet I fixed that slow startup today.

I'm on win10 build 17083
PSP 2018
AMD Ryzen 7
12 GB

By using Corel PaintShop Merge in the corelfolder I finally got a message telling me that the path to \documents\Corel PaintShop Pro did not exist.
By checking, and confirming the correct path, I closed Merge and clicked on x64 version. To my delight it started within 3 sec. Also x86 started within the same timeframe.

Hope this helps.
Cheers.

[Ken Berry]

By using Corel PaintShop Merge in the corelfolder I finally got a message telling me that the path to \documents\Corel PaintShop Pro did not exist.

Hi Bjorn, and welcome to the forum! Thank you also for this suggestion. But can you provide a little more information. I confess I had never used PaintShop Merge before so may be missing something here. However, I just opened it (as you said, by finding it in C:\Program Files\Corel\Corel PaintShop Pro 2018 (x64)), entered two slightly different though otherwise identical photos and merged them. Clicked on Process, then Save and Close. It saved as a pspimage in my Pictures library. I did not get any message about the path to \documents\Corel PaintShop Pro -- though on looking there I see that two new HDR-related sub-folders were created at the same time as I was using Merge.

So I am wondering if you could provide a little more detail about when in the process in Merge you got that message and how you went about correcting "checking, and confirming") the path.

[Ozric]

Hi guys!
I'm not sure this is going to help you, bet I fixed that slow startup today.

I'm on win10 build 17083
PSP 2018
AMD Ryzen 7
12 GB

By using Corel PaintShop Merge in the corelfolder I finally got a message telling me that the path to \documents\Corel PaintShop Pro did not exist.
By checking, and confirming the correct path, I closed Merge and clicked on x64 version. To my delight it started within 3 sec. Also x86 started within the same timeframe.

Hope this helps.
Cheers.

Can you elaborate, step by step, on how you did this ?

[bruce1951]

I still maintain it's not JUST PSP and/or Win 10. Slow start up for PSP has been an on going issue way before PSP2018 and Win 10.
There is something else causing this issue.

I have just turned my computer on. Turned on the internet and started reading. Read this forum/thread. With the internet still turn on, something I never do, I clicked on the PSPx8 icon. 11 seconds for first start up. 5 seconds for the next start up. PSP always starts in Edit mode.

I'm on a HP Envy. i5. Win 8.1. 8 gig ram. It is a standard non modified Win 8.1 installation. No extra security or firewall software.
I have 700 gig of images in my Pictures folder.

So why do I never get slow starts?
Those having issues need to look at what else they have in common on their systems.

bruce