Photoshop slowdown

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

Within the past few weeks I have noticed a dramatic lag when using photoshop. For example, before when selecting different tools (clicking on the tool) it would transition instantly. Or say i was going to make a selection, it would do this instantly. Opening documents also would go fairly fast. Now when i do any of these things it can take anywhere from 5-15 seconds before the changes take effect. This is a considerable amount of time just to switch tools and to be productive at all. I have changed one major thing in my system, my memory, i had a 128MB chip and 256MB chip. I ran some mem tests and found the 256MB one was bad so i took it out. (lifetime warranty so it will be replaced). I dont think it is the memory though cause even though i only have 128MB right now when i close all programs except essential ones and photoshop, the problem still occurs with no improvement. Here are my system specs to help you out:

Athlon 700
128MB generic RAM
epox 7kxa mob
Matrox G400 DH 32MB
SB Live! Plat 5.1
Triple Boot: ME, 2000, XP (whistler)

I use ME most of the time and thats where i run photoshop. Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[Guest]

I've heard nothing but horror stories about WinMe. How is it running for you otherwise? Do you notice any other programs not working as well as they used to / should?

Mainly, I've only heard problems with WinMe recognizing hardware, such as CDRWs, tape backups, DVD players, etc. I'm not sure, but doesn't WinMe also take up a large amount of RAM (Somewhere between 32-64 MB?) If so, that leaves Photoshop, which is getting more and more notorious for memory consumption, with 64 MB to 96 MB of RAM. Effects rendering in Photoshop can also be incredibly processor intensive, especially with an Athlon B. However, I would have to say that you are simply running out of RAM and your system is being forced to use some virtual memory on your HD. Run sysmon or another such program to see how much memory is being locked and shared by the system. Also check the processor usage, which I'm sure will be 100% during rendering.

Thank you for your time,

Iceburn

 

[Guest]

I would say that most everything else works just fine. I run norton systemworks so i have a constant mem/cpu/vir-mem/dskactivity monitors runnning all the time. My hard drives are defragmented every weekend and almost never have access on them during photoshop. WinME is a memory hog, like right now i have 6.4MB free and i have only AIM ICQ and internet explorer running. Rendering things actually hasnt seemed to slow down that much. And the cpu usage while doing things other than rendering only goes up to generaly 45%. The problem is normally just experienced when changing tools, opening files, selecting or moving things, and i believe thats about it. Thanks for any more help.

 

[Spdy_Gonzales]

I think the problem may be the PC Health Scheduler which is running continuously in the background. You can temporarily turn it off by going to settings/control panel/scheduled tasks/pc health scheduler. Click on the Schedule tab and then the advanced button. Click the end date box and enter todays date. The task will stop at the end of the day. You will lose all previous restore points, but the system will continue to create a restore point each day. You can reactivate the continuous function any time by unchecking the end date box.

Another consideration is the Norton programs running in the background. They also waste resources. You can turn these off too, unless you feel you that absolutely must have them. I think their system monitor is just a toy which degrades performance. I don't run any Norton stuff in the background.
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I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges.

 

[Guest]

well i would rather keep my restore points. As for things running in the background i have closed everything except the essentials such as explorer.exe and then opened photoshop. Even with everything closed except the things required to run windows it still had the same problem.

 

[Guest]

I just bought Photoshop 6.0 last week, and on the system requirements, it says that 64 MBs are needed. That means that if you have 6.4 MBs free when you open up Photoshop, at least 53.6 MBs of memory is allocated in your virtual memory table on your hard disk. Calls to your 7200rpm hardrive go much slower than calls to your RAM, and that is no doubt hindering Photoshops performance, especially if it is loading up its hashes, structures, or even its exe on your HD. I believe that a lack of memory is slowing you down.

Thank you for your time,

Iceburn