Faster startup

Gordon Pembury wrote:

CS2 starts very slowly. Is there some eay I can improve startup time
Many thanks

Gordon

Get a faster computer.

Clyde

"Gordon Pembury" wrote in message

CS2 starts very slowly. Is there some eay I can improve startup time

Cut down the number of fonts and plugins or buy a Way Back machine.

Fewer half wits responding to questions would help too. Child!

"Clyde" wrote in message

Gordon Pembury wrote:

CS2 starts very slowly. Is there some eay I can improve startup time
Many thanks

Gordon

Get a faster computer.

Clyde

"Gordon Pembury" wrote in message

CS2 starts very slowly. Is there some eay I can improve startup time

How much memory do you have? CS2 needs memory thrown at it. IMHO, 1 gig minimum for a good startup time, and 2 gig is better if you work on multiple large images.

FYI, responding to poor responses often just ignites a series of such posts. —
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com

I have a 1Gb. maybe time for more. Point on poor response noted. End of a hard day!

Gordon

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

"Gordon Pembury" wrote in message

CS2 starts very slowly. Is there some eay I can improve startup time

How much memory do you have? CS2 needs memory thrown at it. IMHO, 1 gig minimum for a good startup time, and 2 gig is better if you work on multiple large images.

FYI, responding to poor responses often just ignites a series of such posts.
—
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com

Mike Russell wrote:

"Gordon Pembury" wrote in message

CS2 starts very slowly. Is there some eay I can improve startup time

How much memory do you have? CS2 needs memory thrown at it. IMHO, 1 gig minimum for a good startup time, and 2 gig is better if you work on multiple large images.

FYI, responding to poor responses often just ignites a series of such posts.

Hi Mike,

just out of curiosity here, why would 1gb of RAM help PS "start up" any quicker than having, say, 512mb RAM? It is obvious why it would run quicker, as 512MB would be exceeded in no time and then you would be reading and writing off the harddisk all the time, but why starting up? I am not sure how much RAM is being used just to have PS and Windows open.

I have not done a lot of reading on this type of technicality, but I was always under the impression that additional RAM increases performance in situations where one otherwise would have exceeded their RAM.

Regards,
Brian.

From: "Brian" <cooloox_at_optusnet.com.au>
[re CS2 startup]

just out of curiosity here, why would 1gb of RAM help PS "start up" any quicker than having, say, 512mb RAM? It is obvious why it would run quicker, as 512MB would be exceeded in no time and then you would be reading and writing off the harddisk all the time, but why starting up? I am not sure how much RAM is being used just to have PS and Windows open.

It’s highly possible that 512 megs would provide good performance, but CS2 has a much wider memory footprint than earlier versions. I installed CS2 an older system with 192 megs of ram, and although PS6 and CS ran reasonably well on that particular system, CS2 took about 2 minutes or more to start up.

That said, Gordon already has 1 gig of memory, so I question whether this is actually the problem in his case. It could be a font issue, a bad prefs file, access to cached files on the network, or other problems. Or he might be using Bridge, which is a notoriously slow program, even on maxxed out systems.

I have not done a lot of reading on this type of technicality, but I was always under the impression that additional RAM increases performance in situations where one otherwise would have exceeded their RAM.

That is accurate in general. Photoshop is an interesting application regarding virtual memory use, though, because it "peeks" at the physical memory size of your system, and attempts to implement its own virtual memory system, limiting its own use to a percentage of your systems physical memory.

This is a throwback to the pre virtual memory days of Photoshop when it ran on the Mac only, and the Mac had no decent virtual memory support. Photoshop does a poor job of memory management compared to the operating system.
—
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com

Mike Russell wrote:

From: "Brian" <cooloox_at_optusnet.com.au>
[re CS2 startup]

just out of curiosity here, why would 1gb of RAM help PS "start up" any quicker than having, say, 512mb RAM? It is obvious why it would run quicker, as 512MB would be exceeded in no time and then you would be reading and writing off the harddisk all the time, but why starting up? I am not sure how much RAM is being used just to have PS and Windows open.

It’s highly possible that 512 megs would provide good performance, but CS2 has a much wider memory footprint than earlier versions. I installed CS2 an older system with 192 megs of ram, and although PS6 and CS ran reasonably well on that particular system, CS2 took about 2 minutes or more to start up.

That said, Gordon already has 1 gig of memory, so I question whether this is actually the problem in his case. It could be a font issue, a bad prefs file, access to cached files on the network, or other problems. Or he might be using Bridge, which is a notoriously slow program, even on maxxed out systems.

I have not done a lot of reading on this type of technicality, but I was always under the impression that additional RAM increases performance in situations where one otherwise would have exceeded their RAM.

That is accurate in general. Photoshop is an interesting application regarding virtual memory use, though, because it "peeks" at the physical memory size of your system, and attempts to implement its own virtual memory system, limiting its own use to a percentage of your systems physical memory.

This is a throwback to the pre virtual memory days of Photoshop when it ran on the Mac only, and the Mac had no decent virtual memory support. Photoshop does a poor job of memory management compared to the operating system.
—
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com

Talking of start-up time, according to an article I read, Photoshop CS takes 10 seconds to open on a 3.4Ghz Pentium IV computer with 1Gb RAM, and 8 seconds on 2nd opening (if you close it and re-open). When you consider the likes of MS Word opens on a similar computer in a fraction of a second, it goes to show how demanding PS really is.

Thanks for the response Mike,
Brian.

"Brian" <cooloox_at_optusnet.com.au> wrote in message

Talking of start-up time, according to an article I read, Photoshop CS takes 10 seconds to open on a 3.4Ghz Pentium IV computer with 1Gb RAM, and 8 seconds on 2nd opening (if you close it and re-open). When you consider the likes of MS Word opens on a similar computer in a fraction of a second, it goes to show how demanding PS really is.

Thanks for the response Mike,
Brian.

This is likely to reflect the situation that some — or all — of the DLL’s used by the program are still loaded and no longer need to be found or initialized. Possibly Windows’ own hard disk caching also contributes to second startup speed.

Norm

Gordon Pembury wrote:

Fewer half wits responding to questions would help too. Child!

"Clyde" wrote in message

Gordon Pembury wrote:

CS2 starts very slowly. Is there some eay I can improve startup time
Many thanks

Gordon

Get a faster computer.

Clyde

I guess I deserve that. ;-%

However, that really is the answer. Adding more than 1GB of memory in CS2 will help a lot. Almost everything else will only help a little. So, getting a faster computer is the answer. Of course, it should be a faster computer in all aspects and specs.

Clyde

Clyde wrote:

However, that really is the answer. Adding more than 1GB of memory in CS2 will help a lot. Almost everything else will only help a little. So, getting a faster computer is the answer. Of course, it should be a faster computer in all aspects and specs.

Uh?

Well, "almost everything else will only help a little" and "it should be a faster computer in all aspects and specs" is mutually contradictory. So, what is it you’re actually suggesting?

– More Memory?
– or a faster computer (processor)?

—
Gregor’s Motorradreisen:
http://hothaus.de/greg-tour/

"Greg N." wrote in message

Clyde wrote:

However, that really is the answer. Adding more than 1GB of memory in CS2 will help a lot. Almost everything else will only help a little. So, getting a faster computer is the answer. Of course, it should be a faster computer in all aspects and specs.

Uh?

Well, "almost everything else will only help a little" and "it should be a faster computer in all aspects and specs" is mutually contradictory. So, what is it you’re actually suggesting?

– More Memory?
– or a faster computer (processor)?

Clyde’s answer is incomplete. My little tablet computer starts CS faster than my SOA 1.8gb RAM desktop with two fixed drives. I can tell you that the RAM has the least to do with my case. The desktop installation has lots of fonts and plug-ins. The tablet is minimized.

More drives first. Fewer fonts and plug-ins.

Or do as I do. Start CS in the morning automatically and leave it up (until, that is, the license fails and it closes – but that’s a Norton bug.)

Thanks for all the interesting and helpful thoughts.

I do have Bridge installed but I do not use it much. I pretty much know where my images are.

Now this may be an idiot question and if it is , my apologies. But how do I uninstall just Bridge. It shows up under c/progs/adobe separately but not in add/remove programmes

My son has always told me never to delete files but always uninstall. So how do I do it? Do I uninstall CS2 and then re-install without Bridge or is there a better way?

Many thanks

Gordon

"Norm Dresner" wrote in message

"Brian" <cooloox_at_optusnet.com.au> wrote in message

Talking of start-up time, according to an article I read, Photoshop CS takes 10 seconds to open on a 3.4Ghz Pentium IV computer with 1Gb RAM, and 8 seconds on 2nd opening (if you close it and re-open). When you consider the likes of MS Word opens on a similar computer in a fraction of a second, it goes to show how demanding PS really is.
Thanks for the response Mike,
Brian.

This is likely to reflect the situation that some — or all — of the DLL’s used by the program are still loaded and no longer need to be found or initialized. Possibly Windows’ own hard disk caching also contributes to second startup speed.

Norm

Gordon

If you’re so hard up for hard disk space that you want to uninstall part of the CS2 package, I’d suggest that buying a new HD is a much better solution than trying to delete files blindly.

Norm

"Gordon Pembury" wrote in message

Thanks for all the interesting and helpful thoughts.

I do have Bridge installed but I do not use it much. I pretty much know where my images are.

Now this may be an idiot question and if it is , my apologies. But how do I uninstall just Bridge. It shows up under c/progs/adobe separately but not in add/remove programmes

My son has always told me never to delete files but always uninstall. So how do I do it? Do I uninstall CS2 and then re-install without Bridge or is there a better way?

Many thanks

Gordon

"Norm Dresner" wrote in message

"Brian" <cooloox_at_optusnet.com.au> wrote in message

Talking of start-up time, according to an article I read, Photoshop CS takes 10 seconds to open on a 3.4Ghz Pentium IV computer with 1Gb RAM, and 8 seconds on 2nd opening (if you close it and re-open). When you consider the likes of MS Word opens on a similar computer in a fraction of a second, it goes to show how demanding PS really is.
Thanks for the response Mike,
Brian.

This is likely to reflect the situation that some — or all — of the DLL’s used by the program are still loaded and no longer need to be found or initialized. Possibly Windows’ own hard disk caching also contributes to second startup speed.

Norm

"Gordon Pembury" wrote in message

Thanks for all the interesting and helpful thoughts.

I do have Bridge installed but I do not use it much. I pretty much know where my images are.

Now this may be an idiot question and if it is , my apologies. But how do I uninstall just Bridge. It shows up under c/progs/adobe separately but not in add/remove programmes

AFAIK, there is no way to uninstall Bridge only. The good news is that it won’t slow your system down unless you run it.

My son has always told me never to delete files but always uninstall. So how do I do it? Do I uninstall CS2 and then re-install without Bridge or is there a better way?

You are fortunate in having a smart son. One reason he is right is that some installers will automatically repair missing files anyway. I generally avoid starting Bridge – when it does start for any reason, I pretend Adobe has beamed me a commercial that I can’t turn off.

As for your original problem, though, it may be time to try some things to isolate the source of the slowness. With one gig of memory, you should be seeing startup times in the 20 to 40 second range. If you’re seeing much more than this, there are other possibilities, a few are listed below.

1) watch the startup messages, and see if you can characterize the time it takes them to load. Font loading in particular is a lengthy process.

2) reset the preferences. I seldom do this, however it is an easy thing to try. Hold down the ctrl, alt, and shift keys during startup, and click Yes when Photoshop asks if you want to reset your prefs.

3) enumeration of previously opened files. This used to be a common problem, back with version 6.0, but it seldom shows up as a problem these days. If you open files over a network, it’s conceivable that reducing your recent file list setting could reduce startup time.
—
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com

Greg N. wrote:

Clyde wrote:

However, that really is the answer. Adding more than 1GB of memory in CS2 will help a lot. Almost everything else will only help a little. So, getting a faster computer is the answer. Of course, it should be a faster computer in all aspects and specs.

Uh?

Well, "almost everything else will only help a little" and "it should be a faster computer in all aspects and specs" is mutually contradictory. So, what is it you’re actually suggesting?

– More Memory?
– or a faster computer (processor)?

I’ve been using Photoshop since… Well, some version a long time ago. I’ve used it on a bunch of different computers, PC, Mac, slow, fast, etc. I’ve also been reading in newsgroups and forums about a thousand ways to speed up Photoshop. I’ve tried most of them because I’ve worked on more slow computers than fast ones.

My experience is that many of these tips and tricks for speeding things up give minor improvement. Many of them have done nothing at all for me. Many of them have helped only a tiny bit. A very few have helped a significant amount. None have made huge improvements in speed.

Of course, I’ve been "lucky" in that I haven’t had a lot of the serious problems some people seem to have. For example, my Bridge and CS2 don’t seem to have the serious performance problems that some do. Mine runs slightly faster than CS did. (OK, I have a fast, loaded computer too.)

The only thing I’ve found that significantly improves the speed of Photoshop is a faster computer. Get the fastest computer you can. That primarily means the fastest processor you can accompanied by matching fast hard drives, memory, and other IO devices.

The hardware should be matched in its specs. i.e. There is no point putting a slow HD in a computer with a fast CPU. Why would you get a fast CPU and have a small amount of slow memory? Etc. You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip.

I apologize if my original answer seemed flippant. I did trivialize it a bit. I do stick by my answer that speedy Photoshop needs speedy hardware. Please try all the speed improving tips, tricks, and techniques in addition. They certainly can’t hurt and they may help a tad.

Clyde

When PS starts, it loads many things taken from the hard disk into the ram. Fast data transfer from HDD is critical. Good video card and fast CPU play a part also. As CS2 is new to upgrade, hardware especially HDD and chipset on MB have to be upgraded at the same level in order to keep in pace. To avoid CS2 sluggish start up, the computer set shouldn’t be more than 1 year old or at least a P4 2.6 GHz configuration. Ram capacity don’t really play a part in start up but it does and crucial when doing editing work. So what Clyde said is true to a certain point.

"Gordon Pembury" wrote in message

CS2 starts very slowly. Is there some eay I can improve startup time
Many thanks

Gordon