Somewhat sudden CS2 SLOWDOWN. Please help.

[jammer_jammer]

I have a fast dual processor, two gigs of ram, and plenty of hard drive space.

OS is Windows XP. Working with 130MB scans has been a breeze for like 3

months or so. I could run my Nikon V ED, Nikon Scan, CS2 and even keep my

favorite BBS in the browser all at the same time without a hickup. Now, for

some unknown reason, CS2 has slowed down dramatically. Everything is slower.

Things that used to happen in the blink of an eye, like flattening an image

with several layers or using a filter or even just closing an image, now can

take up to 30 seconds or more. I'm becoming very familiar with the progress bar

which I had hardly ever seen before. After having it run so smoothly for all

this time, this is driving me batty.<p>

 

There has been no new hardware or software introduced to the system. There has

been no new updates to anything other than the automatic security updates that

I get from MS and have been getting all along. <p>

 

Things I've done so far:<br>

1. Checked for viruses. Don't have any.<br>

2. I use C for my programs/apps and a D Drive for data and scratch disc. I

have cleaned and defragged both drives.<br>

3. Emptied IE cache and deleted all temp files that I could find anywhere.<br>

4. Deleted my CS2 preferences.<p>

 

None of this has had any effect thus far. Somebody PLEASE tell me that you

know what's going on and that you know exactly what I can do to fix it. I'M

GOING CRAZY! I bought this really nice, big, custom system, with all this ram,

so that I wouldn't have to deal with this kind of crap any more.<p>

 

HELP!

[michael_bradtke]

Try this out

 

http://www.trendmicro.com/hc_intro/default.asp

 

At least then you will be sure that you do not have any grayware or Malwar on your system.

 

Also how close are your drives to being full? That will really slow the system down.

 

Also when you dumped your prefs in CS2 did you go back in and set thing up again? You know memory usage and scratch disc?

 

Best of luck.

 

Michael

[james d.]

See what is actually running. One time I had a version of AOL that was eating 98% or my

processing power. I killed that app and things were back to normal.

 

Good luck

[Ed_Ingold]

How do you kill AOL? You have a better chance of healing cancer - a closely related condition.

 

Use "Task Manager" to see what is running and consuming resources. Make sure, in Photoshop, that your scratch disk is not the root disk nor the data disk, and a separate drive not just a partition. Have at least 2MB of RAM, and make sure nothing has lodged itself in RAM without your consent.

 

Do a cookie and malware sweep. Without aggressive firewall protection, you tend to accumulate spyware that screams out your every move to some anonymous receiver on the internet, using your resources indiscriminately. Photo.net is, on occasion, one of those offenders via their advertisers.

[Ed_Ingold]

Under Microsoft Windows, the disk indexing function takes an heavy toll on your disk bandwidth. I turn it off, for what little benefit it offers. Norton GoBack is another waste of time, as is Norton File Protection - too many file operations are needlessly duplicated. Microsoft Office screams a lot over the web - turn off the background Office applications unless you have an obsessive need for them.

 

Disk fragmentation is not a big issue with NTFS, but can cause a problem with FAT32 or an O/S earlier than W2K or XP. Clean up unused files, but don't bother to defrag big, NTFS disks.

[jammer_jammer]

Thanks everybody.<p>

 

1. I have already done Malware and cookie sweeps.<br>

2. I don't use Norton.<br>

3. I still have gobs of space left on both of my drives.<p>

 

Edward,<br>

I'm not exactly a computer wiz so I don't understand what you mean by, "Make sure, in Photoshop, that your scratch disk is not the root disk nor the data disk, and a separate drive not just a partition"<p>

 

This is what I know. I have a C drive and a D drive. On C, I have all of my programs. On D I keep all of my data/files/photos ect., ect. Do to someones suggestion, trying to help with with this recent slow down, I have just recently moved scratch one to my D drive as apposed to Startup. This did nothing to help. Where SHOULD my scratch disc go?<p>

 

I have attached a screen capture of my Task Manager. Do you see anything out of the ordinary there?<p>

 

Thanks.<div></div>

[ronaldo_r]

basically, IT Help Desk diagnostics is all about "what else has changed?" kind of questions. Something obviously has. Try to reconstruct and exclude. Change one thing at a time

[beauh44]

"Make sure, in Photoshop, that your scratch disk is not the root disk nor the data disk, and a separate drive not just a partition"

 

I believe what Edward is referring to is that, ideally you want a second hard disk in your PC that does not contain the Photoshop program to be used as a memory scratch disk. This can be set in PS by going to Edit>Preferences>Memory and Image Cache.

 

Of course if you don't have a second hard disk this will be impossible to do and Photoshop will still work; but this will help performance - again, if you have a second hard disk. External disks won't do - they're usually too slow (USB & Firewire that is)

 

Some other thoughts: You could have a corrupt PS ini file. You can "thump" PS over the head and cause it to make a fresh one by holding down ctrl-alt-shift *while* you click on the icon to start the program. You'll be prompted if you want to continue, say yes.

 

Other thoughts: Clear all your .tmp files. Defrag your drive(s). You can also allocate more CPU cycles to Photoshop. Fire up PS then press ctrl-alt-del to bring up Task Mangler. CLick on Processes. Find Photoshop.exe in the list and right-click it. Select "Set Priority" and choose either "above normal" or "high". Windoze might warn you that the world will explode but it won't. This just gives your PS app a larger slice of your processor's "pie" so to speak.

 

Other thoughts: If you've installed lots of other apps and your registry has gotten rather bloated that can slow things down. In fact, Windoze can just slow down the more you use it, especially if you try out lots of software. I'm afraid the only cure for that is to format your drive, re-install the OS and Photoshop - which is admittedly rather drastic surgery. There are some applications that claim to clean out your registry; you might try those but be sure to back up your registry first.

 

A badly written plug-in can chew up CPU cycles in Photoshop and really mess things up. You might want to remove any extraneous ones at least temporarily to see if that helps.

 

Lastly you could simply try un-installing and re-installing Photoshop. I know - another pita but that might do the trick too. (I'd defrag after uninstalling it myself)

 

I know how you feel - my dual-core PC's about a year old now and when I first got it, PS was peppy as hell. It's not anymore but I can still bear it. For now. Good luck!

[beauh44]

Do you see anything out of the ordinary there?

 

Maybe. When I fire up Photoshop CS (not CS2 though!) my mem usage is 158,808 KB. Yours is 883,216 KB. Perhaps there's that much difference between the two but that seems like a BIG difference!

 

I'm guessing "Plug-ins Gone Wild" but I could be wrong... You might try the above-mentioned ctrl-alt-shift trick too. Good luck!

[Ed_Ingold]

I have CS2, and it starts up using 75MB of RAM.

 

Check the preferences, File Handling page (Edit/Preferences). You might be using too much memory for Photoshop. I'm set at 55%. I'm using my startup drive for scratch (the one with Program Files), but all my images are on other drives, some external.

 

Back to basics - what have you done that coincides with the change in performance? Software? Hardware?

[denise_d]

How long has it been since you last shut down and powered off your PC? If you are one of those folks who leaves it on all the time, try shutting it down completely and then restarting. I have seen that work wonders on some systems. Lots of Windows apps have memory leak problems and they never really free up RAM when you close them. I don't see anything in your screenshot that is unusual.

[mirek_elsner1]

If the slowdown was sudden, then there is a good chance that it was one setting that changed or one program that you installed that caused it. Go back in your memory and try to recall what you changed or installed.

 

If the drop in performance is significant, I would suspect that your PS does not have enough memory for its execution and needs to use disk, which is significantly slower than memory. Did you change amount of memory PS can allocate? Did you start processing images in 16 bit instead of 8? Did you change your workflow so that now you use more layers?

 

If this is not a memory issue and your PS used disks before, perhaps something was done that makes disk operations slower. New antivirus? Isn't the D disk an external USB drive?

 

You can increase your chance of resolving the problem by posting this question to forum at Adobe web site. I'd guess you could use their tech support as well.

[cameradude]

I agree with Denise on restarting the whole system. If you are one to leave the computer on all the time, you should be restarting once a day if it doesn't affect any of your programs.

[William Kahn]

I agree with Denise and Robert - shut down your computer and restart after about 30 seconds. During the shutdown process, watch for indications of applications/functions that are slow in shutting down. Also:

 

1. In Task Manager, go to the Performance tab and look at the CPU usage graph. What percentage do you see?

 

2. Are your "C" and "D" drives actually separate drives, or do you have one drive partitioned into "C" and "D"? If partitioned, your "D" drive is likely your computer's recovery drive and you shouldn't be putting anything on it.

 

3. Run diskcheck, the longer version that searches for and repairs bad sectors.

 

4. I disagree with Beau on the subject on external drives. I use an external Maxtor hard drive as my scratch disk, and there are no speed problems (USB 2.0).

[howard_owen]

Don't overlook the obvious: those automatic updates from MS can be deadly. I never, repeat never, allow MS to decide what will be updated on my computer.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here the slowest box that I run CS2 on is a 10 year old PPro with 512megs of ram and dual 333Mhz CPU's. CS2 is loaded on not the boot drive, but to a snappy 7200Rpm modern drive on a modern pci 133 controller. This unit was the boss hog drean machine about a decade ago, but now is just a dedicated scan station. <BR><BR>My modern CS2 boxes have at least 2 gigs of ram, 2.5 + Ghz cpus. Most all slowdowns I have recieved has been due to crud one recieved with install of bogus programs, mystery updates, or if somebody changed the scratch drive settings. <BR><BR>With the mostly clean 10 year old box, it only has 19 processes running under task manager. many of my photoshop boxes have only 20 to 25 processes running. <BR><BR>I have a neighbor whos 6 month old dream machine is abit pokey, its always web connected and has 50 to 70 processes running, he uses AOL, IM, utorrent, Kazza, Norton, Adware, Spybot, Ewido, and many times all at once. Before he got broadband the unit was always bogging in Bills automatic updates. Look at task manager and try to figure what crud is running, sometimes sneaky stuff can be consuming the computer and still not show up in task manager. Probably some dog manure from stuff from Kazza or Limeware is tracking all his movements! :) Sometimes sneaky stuff can hide in ram, try ewido/AVG to ferret out the crud. Here we had a CS2 2.5 Gighz P$ that got pokey and it had some crud that ewido found that was consumming horsepower.<BR><BR>Many of my non web boxes perform like models a generation later, I believe the "up grade to a new computer" is often like buying a new car, the old one has bowling balls, a weight set in the trunk. :)

[kelly_flanigan1]

At the print shop there is always another new font to deal with. IF one has too many fonts on a box, photoshop can bog while loading. <BR><BR>One can do HDA read/write speed check using DiskSpeed 32, and check the actual performance of ones HDA and other drives. Typically one has a faster read/write curve at the outer tracks than at the inner tracks. If one places a modern HDA on an obsolete Pii box, often the old controller is the bottleneck, and one gets a flat graph. Usually the controller is 2 to 3 times faster than the actual HDAs data tranfer rate. In external USB 2.0 drives sometimes folks connect them thru a poor usb 1.0 hub or to a usb 1.0 port, or a usb 2.0 port that acts like a 1.0 port. Here data thru-put can be horrible, snail slow.

[jammer_jammer]

A great big thank you to everyone that has chimed in here. I really appreciate it. Being the luddite that I am, it is a lot to take in, digest and incorporate but I will work on each suggestion one at a time and see what happens.<p>

 

Many of the suggestions I have already done as per my original post but some I'll have to look into.<p>

 

While a lot of the suggestions sound great for all around performance inprovement, the automatic update thing is looking interesting to me right now. The reason being is that this slow down was more of an event as apposed to an gradual slow down. It was working fine one day and then the next day, things that were only taking the blink of an eye ,were all of the sudden taking up to 30 seconds or more. This even happens just closing out and image?<p>

 

The two things that get updated automatically on my PC are security updates from MS and from AVG. In case an update from one or the other WERE to be the problem, could someone tell me in very plain laymans terms how to check that out? I've never done it nor do I have the slightest clue how to go about it but I've heard people mentioning that there is a way to make the PC go back to the state it was in at a paricular point in time, in the past, say a week or two ago, before the problem occured. If this is a fairly safe and easy thing to do, could someone please explain, in very easy to understand terms, how I would go about doing that?<p>

 

Thanks again for your continued support.

[howard_owen]

Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Restore. Assuming that SR is enabled, you can pick a date on which a Restore Point or System Checkpoint was created and revert. It's menu driven and pretty self explanatory.

[jtk]

IMO you need a second hard drive. Get an external...they're plug & play and you'll want one eventually anyway.

 

I use two Maxtors (120G ea, not huge) with 1G of RAM...plenty fast for my non-pro purposes. And I listen to KPIG.com or Hawaiianrainbow.com while scanning/Photoshopping.

[denise_d]

MS auto-update could very well be causing some of your problems. I've seen it do some nasty things to my servers at work. Plus, it's a resource hog, as the auto-update process on your PC is constantly talking to the update servers at MS and comparing what you have to the latest versions they have in order to try and determine what you need. You can turn it off in the control panel.

 

MS releases updates on the second Tuesday of each month, usually in the afternoon. SO, if you can trace your slowdown problems back to a Tuesday or a Wednesday, it's a good chance that a new update is to blame (at least partially) for your slowdown.

[kelly_flanigan1]

With freebie AVG virus scan software, many variants start a scan at 8am in the morning. One can see a bog if one has a slower box.

[jammer_jammer]

Howard,<br>

I have now done a system restore. I was really excited about this one since this slowdown seemed more like and event as apposed to a gradual thing but no dice. I took the restore back at least two weeks before this slowdown happened and it did not help. :(<p>

 

John,<br>

As I mentioned in my first post, I already use two hard drives. C has my OS and all of my programs. D has all of my data and the scratch for CS2. I also have and external to backup all of my data. All drives are large, fast and have gobs of room left on them. : (

[jammer_jammer]

Denise,<br>

Thanks but I've tried a system restore going back at least two weeks before I noticed the slowdown and it had no effect. : (

[niblet]

Some ideas to explore:

1)Maybe it's something simple. I've read a corrupt font file will slow CS2. Try turning off font preview in preferences.

2)At work I have 7.0 and had to disable the file browser to cure a sudden slowdown. I avoid Bridge like the plague because my older system at home can't handle it.