PS CS2 loading really slowly …

In article <44bf8f77$0$17961$>,
says…

Hi all, long time no see? It has been a while since I posted.
Anyone got any ideas how to speed up load times for PS CS2. It was OK but recently it has slowed down to the point of coma …

Today I timed it loading …. it sat on reading preferences for 4 minutes 30 seconds, and then completed loading in 30 seconds !!! That was with no other apps loaded.

Running version 9.0.1, tried reinstalling, tried trashing the pref. (all the files in the folder) all with no effect.

I am using Windows XP SP2, Athlon XP1600 with 1Gb RAM. I know it is never going to be superspeedy on those stats but 5 minutes load time is taking the p**s.

TIA

Carol Haynes
PS> Is Hecate still about these days? Can’t see any of her posts?

OK, you tried the Trash Prefs – that was going to be my first suggestion, especially based on where it appeared that the time was being spent in the loading.

Next two areas to think about are plug-ins – added a bunch lately?

Then fonts. How many are active on your machine? You might try disabling a bunch that you don’t often use and time the startup.

Now, those are guesses, especially as PS is pretty good about letting you know what it is doing and plug-ins and fonts usually get their own line of text on the splash screen.

Lastly, have you run a defrag on your OS/PS HDD lately? If one has limited HDD space, and especially if they use it for image files that get overwritten with changes, etc. defragging can really speed things up. There is not much processor power or RAM used in the initial startup of PS, so I’d look at an IO bottleneck of some sort.

Hunt

PS no one seems to have heard from Hecate in some time – much to the loss of the NG.

In article <44bf8f77$0$17961$>,
says…

Hi all, long time no see? It has been a while since I posted.
Anyone got any ideas how to speed up load times for PS CS2. It was OK but recently it has slowed down to the point of coma …

Today I timed it loading …. it sat on reading preferences for 4 minutes 30
seconds, and then completed loading in 30 seconds !!! That was with no other
apps loaded.

Running version 9.0.1, tried reinstalling, tried trashing the pref. (all the
files in the folder) all with no effect.

I am using Windows XP SP2, Athlon XP1600 with 1Gb RAM. I know it is never going to be superspeedy on those stats but 5 minutes load time is taking the
p**s.

What Hunt said, plus check your event log for ATA timeouts. Slowness like this can be caused by a flaky disk drive causing a lot of retries. —

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com/forum/

Thanks Hunt and Mike,

I have defragged my system, enlarged my system page file and moved it to a different partition, moved my scratch folder to a partition on a third drive.

Now PS loads in about 90 seconds – which is better but still annoyingly slow.

There are 460 fonts on my system – but the delay always occurs during ‘reading preferences’ not when it looks at fonts.

I have tried disabling font preview and increased available memory to 70% without any noticeable change. I am running with no other apps loaded (not even AV or Firewall during testing) and it makes no difference.

I haven’t added new plugins recently. There are no problems showing in the Events and Error logs.

I’m stumped.

I will try disabling as many fonts as possible and removing some plugins and see if that makes a difference – but that doesn’t seem to be where the bottleneck is during startup.

I have also installed the new beta of LightRoom and if I try to launch Photoshop from there I may as well go off for a meal !!!

Cheers – any other ideas gratefully recieved

Carol

PS I will drop Hecate an email and see if everything is OK.

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 01:15:50 +0100, "Carol Haynes" wrote:

Thanks Hunt and Mike,

I have defragged my system, enlarged my system page file and moved it to a different partition, moved my scratch folder to a partition on a third drive.

Now PS loads in about 90 seconds – which is better but still annoyingly slow.

There are 460 fonts on my system – but the delay always occurs during ‘reading preferences’ not when it looks at fonts.

I have tried disabling font preview and increased available memory to 70% without any noticeable change. I am running with no other apps loaded (not even AV or Firewall during testing) and it makes no difference.
I haven’t added new plugins recently. There are no problems showing in the Events and Error logs.

I’m stumped.

I will try disabling as many fonts as possible and removing some plugins and see if that makes a difference – but that doesn’t seem to be where the bottleneck is during startup.

I have also installed the new beta of LightRoom and if I try to launch Photoshop from there I may as well go off for a meal !!!
Cheers – any other ideas gratefully recieved

Carol

PS I will drop Hecate an email and see if everything is OK.

Could well be hardware rather than software based.

I understand that things were OK originally.

May I suggest that you unclip your memory (after rubbing your hands on the casing) and then firmly pushing them back until the clips snap over?

Because of the heat wave here atm I have had to do that a couple of times on my main machine because of it slowing down to a crawl as the memory eases with thermal stress. At the same time give all the other plugs inside a good shove – they tend to ease as well.

Keith J Chesworth
www.unseenlondon.co.uk
www.blackpooltram.co.uk
www.happysnapper.com
www.boilerbill.com – main site
www.amerseyferry.co.uk

Thanks all for the suggestions but problem solved … it was my plugins folder.

I have a number of AutoFX plugins installed with lots of presets, textures and edge files and I think the slow down was just a response to scanning all the subfolders within plugins. This would also account for the speed up after defragging my drive.

Anyone any idea how to store all these in a separate folder (they are currently where AutoFX installed them and I don’t want to break the plugins).

Thanks again everyone for helpful suggestion.

Carol

I emailed AutoFX and they say it isn’t possible to store the ‘content’ files outside the pugins folder.

Given that there are nearly 25000 files in 351 folders (that isn’t the pugin – just the content files) for PhotoGraphic Edges alone it is no wonder PS CS2 is taking a few minutes to scan that lot!!!

Bummer – it is a good plugin but I am going to have to uninstall it to make PS useable!

Carol

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 01:15:50 +0100, "Carol Haynes" wrote:

….
Re your system slowing down. The reason I suggested a disk drive problem is that I just replaced a drive that gave occasional errors – a few a day – but had almost continuous recovered errors that did not show up in the log that dragged the system almost to a standstill. I was clued in by the fact that the disk activity light would stay lit for long periods. AFAIK, Macs no longer have a light, so this may make it harder to diagnose.

Try isolating the problem by seeing how long a disk to disk copy takes, comparing your two drives with one another. Also, if it’s heat related (lots of heat waves around the world right now!) turn your system off for 15 minutes and see if Photoshop starts faster with the system at a lower temp.

Memory failure would cause a hard crash, and probably a distinctive diminished 7th chord during boot, not just a slow down.

The fact that it’s slow while reading prefs is not really an indicator, since lots of things are happening during that time. Try removing all unnecessary devices – tablets, external drives, etc, and see if that changes the problem.

PS I will drop Hecate an email and see if everything is OK.

Thanks – let me know, whether you get a response or not: mike AT curvemeister DOT com.
—
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com/forum/

In article <44c0fd59$0$17989$>,
says…

I emailed AutoFX and they say it isn’t possible to store the ‘content’ files outside the pugins folder.

Given that there are nearly 25000 files in 351 folders (that isn’t the pugin – just the content files) for PhotoGraphic Edges alone it is no wonder PS CS2 is taking a few minutes to scan that lot!!!

Bummer – it is a good plugin but I am going to have to uninstall it to make PS useable!

Carol

I’ve known several folk, who have had problems with the later AutoFX Edges. I’m glad that I still have the old system, with the Alpha, etc. files on CD. Yes, you have fewer Edges, and have to sort through 4-5 CD’s, plus look at the book for each CD, then Copy/Size the Alpha Channels, but I’ve never experienced a problem with these. I’ve about 20 commonly used Edges on the system, so I don’t go to the CD’s as often, unless I need a new one. I also have renamed the Alpha Channels to better describe what they look like.

Sorry that AutoFX didn’t have a better solution for this problem, but glad you found the bottleneck.

Hunt

I have also found a solution that AutoFX seem unaware of!

On the AutoFX website there is an update for PGE 6 (with CS in the file name). If you install it as the last update it replaces the plugin file in the PS plugins folder and moves all the content files to a folder in Program Files. This is precisely what I needed as it avoids the whole directory structure and files for PGE being scanned when PS starts since it no longer resides in the plugins folder (except for the one small file).

Ostensibly this fix was designed to allow PGE to be used with more than one app with PS plugin support (eg. Corel Paineter) without having to have multiple copies of PGE 6 installed, but it does sort out the issue (at least partly).

Now all I need to do is to persuade AutoFX to do the same for all of their plugins.

Actually it really annoys me that I have spent a lot og money over the years getting all the AutoFX plugins and yet most of them have not seen any updates in about 3 years – and there have been 2 PS releases during that time.

Carol

"Hunt" wrote in message

In article <44c0fd59$0$17989$>,
says…

I emailed AutoFX and they say it isn’t possible to store the ‘content’ files
outside the pugins folder.

Given that there are nearly 25000 files in 351 folders (that isn’t the pugin – just the content files) for PhotoGraphic Edges alone it is no wonder
PS CS2 is taking a few minutes to scan that lot!!!

Bummer – it is a good plugin but I am going to have to uninstall it to make
PS useable!

Carol

I’ve known several folk, who have had problems with the later AutoFX Edges.
I’m glad that I still have the old system, with the Alpha, etc. files on CD.
Yes, you have fewer Edges, and have to sort through 4-5 CD’s, plus look at the
book for each CD, then Copy/Size the Alpha Channels, but I’ve never experienced a problem with these. I’ve about 20 commonly used Edges on the system, so I don’t go to the CD’s as often, unless I need a new one. I also
have renamed the Alpha Channels to better describe what they look like.
Sorry that AutoFX didn’t have a better solution for this problem, but glad you
found the bottleneck.

Hunt

Thanks

See the other parts of the thread for the solution – it wasn’t a hardware issue (in this case anyway).

I will ask Hecate to contact you if I hear from her. I emailed her on Friday (we used to chat a lot via email a while back but we lost touch) and had no response yet. Hope she is OK.

Carol

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 01:15:50 +0100, "Carol Haynes" wrote:

…
Re your system slowing down. The reason I suggested a disk drive problem is that I just replaced a drive that gave occasional errors – a few a day – but had almost continuous recovered errors that did not show up in the log that dragged the system almost to a standstill. I was clued in by the fact that the disk activity light would stay lit for long periods. AFAIK, Macs no longer have a light, so this may make it harder to diagnose.

Try isolating the problem by seeing how long a disk to disk copy takes, comparing your two drives with one another. Also, if it’s heat related (lots of heat waves around the world right now!) turn your system off for 15 minutes and see if Photoshop starts faster with the system at a lower temp.

Memory failure would cause a hard crash, and probably a distinctive diminished 7th chord during boot, not just a slow down.

The fact that it’s slow while reading prefs is not really an indicator, since lots of things are happening during that time. Try removing all unnecessary devices – tablets, external drives, etc, and see if that changes the problem.

PS I will drop Hecate an email and see if everything is OK.

Thanks – let me know, whether you get a response or not: mike AT curvemeister DOT com.
—
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com/forum/

In article <44c4c4fb$0$17987$>,
says…

I have also found a solution that AutoFX seem unaware of!
On the AutoFX website there is an update for PGE 6 (with CS in the file name). If you install it as the last update it replaces the plugin file in the PS plugins folder and moves all the content files to a folder in Program Files. This is precisely what I needed as it avoids the whole directory structure and files for PGE being scanned when PS starts since it no longer resides in the plugins folder (except for the one small file).
Ostensibly this fix was designed to allow PGE to be used with more than one app with PS plugin support (eg. Corel Paineter) without having to have multiple copies of PGE 6 installed, but it does sort out the issue (at least partly).

Now all I need to do is to persuade AutoFX to do the same for all of their plugins.

Actually it really annoys me that I have spent a lot og money over the years getting all the AutoFX plugins and yet most of them have not seen any updates in about 3 years – and there have been 2 PS releases during that time.

Carol

Great that you found the cure. As more programs come to use the Adobe Photoshop Plug-in scheme, it WOULD be nice if more developers did just that. I’ve had to just copy some plug-ins into the various program’s folders, as only "poining" the program to PS-Plug-ins often creates conflicts, as some PS plug-ins do not work in, say Painter, etc. quite right. Luckily, most are quite small, so other than having 3 copies on the machine, nothing else seems to be wrong.

Hunt