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Unanswered CS3 + EW2 = Slow as snail CS3

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      Tuesday, July 01, 2008 3:12 PM
       
       
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      On two different computers when I have both Photoshop CS3 and EW2 open at the same time Photoshop becomes slow, unresponsive and just generally flaky. It loses focus of pallettes, windows and is hard to work with.

      - Both computers have Windows XP, 2GIG of RAM, 3.0 GHZ CPU.
      - EW1 did not have this problem.
      - As soon as I close down EW2 CS3 comes back to life and behaves normally.

      My gut instinct tells me that something related to the new "hook" into CS3 for updating photos is causing Photoshop pain and suffering.

      Any thoughts or others experiencing this problem?
       

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    • Tuesday, July 01, 2008 4:54 PM
       
       
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      Yeah.  I've experienced this with EW2 and Photoshop.  I would be using EW2 and after a while, it would get slower and slower and seem to struggle with getting windows open, particularly the CSS editor.  Eventually it would get so slow that I'd close EW2 and reopen it, and all would be well again for awhile. 

      I'm using Windows Vista though. 
       
    • Tuesday, July 01, 2008 4:59 PM
       
       
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      I'd mention it to Adobe (they have good phone support... except for the time they wanted me to give them the username/password for my website).
      Take a chance. Prepare to be surprised.
       
    • Tuesday, July 01, 2008 5:03 PM
       
       
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      Since CS3 was out for a while before EW2 and closing EW2 fixes the slowness something tells me it's an EW2 issue. Plus EW2 is a newer progam and probably more buggy.

      Anyone know if there's a way to turn off the Photoshop hook? One of the EW2 features is ability to edit photos in Photoshop and then have them update in EW2. There must be a linkage there and I'd like to troublesehoot and see if turning that off improved and fixes the slow, stuttering CS3 problem I have when both programs are open.
       
    • Tuesday, July 01, 2008 5:10 PM
       
       
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      What video card / display adapter are you using?
      FrontPage MVP
       
    • Tuesday, July 01, 2008 5:21 PM
       
       
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      I have the same problem on two different computers. One computer has a built in Intel video adapter and the other has a Nvidia GeForce7900GT with current drivers. I don't believe it's video card related, it could explain the flashy/glitchy behavior but probably not the associated extreme slowness.
       
    • Tuesday, July 01, 2008 8:35 PM
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       This is the first I've heard of this problem. Would one of you please file a bug report at connect.microsoft.com/expression and provide a link to the bug's web page in this thread? Then anyone else who is also experiencing this problem should comment on that bug if they're experiencing the same issue.

      Thank you!
      Anna
      http://blogs.msdn.com/anna
       
    • Tuesday, July 01, 2008 9:00 PM
       
       
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      Eric, is your Photoshop scratch file on the same partition as your pagefile? One of the things that Adobe recommends is to put the scratch file onto another partition or drive if possible. It could be that EW and Photoshop like writing to the drive for temporary data too much and are hitting a bottleneck with the IO requests. How much of your RAM is in operational use when you've got Photoshop open and editing? I can easily run a full Gig with just Photoshop and had a similar problem to you when I was running Photoshop with Visual Studio before I upgraded to 4 GB of ram.
       
    • Tuesday, July 01, 2008 9:04 PM
       
       
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      On both machines, with both programs open, open task manager. ( Ctrl+Alt+Del )
      Click the Processes tab.
      Expand the window to full screen.
      Click View > Select Columns
      Check User Objects and GDI Objects and click OK
      Nore the number of user objects and GDI objects for EW and CS3
      Leave task manager open but minimize it.

      When the machine(s) slow down, maximize the window
      and see how many user and GDI objects there are.

      We're testing for a User object or GDI object memory leak by doing this.

      Also in Windows XP with an nvidia card there is a missing registry entry that casues the system to be constantly checking the registry

      Check the nvidia machine for:
      HKLM\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak\DisableWindowCaching
      If DisableWindowCaching doesn't exist, create it as a dword and give it a value of 0

      Also nwiz.exe can cause slow downs, it is the nvidia file for managing dual monitors.
      If you don't have dual monitors, delete the value that launches nwiz.exe from the Run key in HKLM
      FrontPage MVP
       
    • Friday, July 04, 2008 1:19 AM
       
       
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      My 2gig of RAM and 10,000 RMP Raptor hard drives are not a bottleneck here. There was zero problem with Expression 1. As soon as I installed the beta EW2 on two different computers I noticed the obvious problems immediately. The both run very different hardware.

      The problem could be some combination of software/setup as both machines run pretty much the same software, but who knows. As soon as I close Expression everything is fast again in Photoshop.
       
    • Saturday, July 05, 2008 4:32 PM
       
       
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      No problems with Adobe CS 3 and Expression Web (both v1 and v2 installed here.) While I now have 4 gig ram installed tha't a recent change and I ran it with 2gig up until approx. 2 months ago.  My hard drive is a very slow 4800 1.8" zif drive so just about any other should be faster.
      MS MVP Expression
       
    • Wednesday, March 11, 2009 5:02 PM
       
       
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      I'm resurrecting this because now I'm on yet another computer with EW2 and CS4 and the slowness is still ridiculous. It's a Core i7 build with 6GB RAM and after a while of EW2 being open things begin to crawl. Photoshop seems to suffer the most. When I close EW2 everythign including Photoshop turns back to lightening speed. When I open EW2 back up and work for an hour or so things slowly get slower and slower. This is now the 3rd computer that I'm having these serious slowness problems with. 2 different version of Photshop and two OS systems. I'm sorry but everything points to EW2 being the problem. When I close that app everything lights right back up.
       
    • Wednesday, March 11, 2009 5:20 PM
       
       
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      Hmm, not seeing your symptom here. My workflow often has me with Bridge, Illustrator, and Photoshop (all CS4) open at the same time as EW2. I can go back and forth in the three Adobe programs (a typical workflow with the new suite integration, as you probably recognize) without issue and without a discernible performance hit with EW2 open.

      I'm not saying that you're not seeing the problem that you describe. I am noting that if it were definitely an EW2 issue, I should see it in my workflow, as well, n'est-ce pas? Perhaps there is something other... application, utility, anti-malware... whatever, that we do not have in common that is impacting your performance. I cannot replicate your issue with what seems to be a similar configuration. Sorry I can't help further.

      cheers,
      scott
       
    • Thursday, March 12, 2009 12:03 AM
       
       
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      I am not seeing this issue, either. I often run PS-CS2, Bridge, and EW2 at the same time with no issues. Some of the files I work with in PS approach 1 GB in size (layered TIFF files from scans of 4x5 transparencies). My system is a 3.0GHz CPU with 3 GB RAM, ATI-Radeon Video card, and a Raid-0 disk array. My disk is not partitioned, nor do I have another drive to use for the PS Scratch disk.

      One thing I did do is reduce the amount of RAM available for Photoshop to 60%, and increased my Windoze Paging File size to 1.5 times the amount of installed RAM. My cache level in PS is set to 3.

      At one of the photography forums in which I participate, it was noted that if Photoshop preferences for RAM use is set too high, performance will take a hit, presumably because RAM needed by dependent Windows services was in short supply. So, although it seems counter-intuitive to reduce the RAM used by PS, doing so may actually be beneficial. It is worth taking some time to play around with the RAM setting to optimize it for your particular system.

      Was the OP's issue ever bugged at Connect? If it is, and I experience the problem. I'll be sure to validate and comment on it.

      -Preston
      Columbia, CA. USA http://www.gildedmoon.com
       
    • Thursday, March 12, 2009 12:18 AM
       
       
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      Preston B said:

      Was the OP's issue ever bugged at Connect? If it is, and I experience the problem. I'll be sure to validate and comment on it.

      -Preston

      Columbia, CA. USA http://www.gildedmoon.com

      I don't think so. As a developer, I can tell you that bugging an issue that doesn't appear to be replicable is of limited value. It is difficult to troubleshoot a problem when you cannot reproduce it. When it can't be replicated, and it appears to be limited in its effect to very few users, it is more likely to be an artifact of the affected user's system or configuration than an issue which needs to be addressed in the application. Part of the process of entering a bug includes "Steps to replicate." Kinda hard to enter that part when you can't replicate, eh?  ;-)

      cheers,
      scott

       
    • Thursday, March 12, 2009 12:41 AM
       
       
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      "Part of the process of entering a bug includes "Steps to replicate." Kinda hard to enter that part when you can't replicate, eh?  ;-)"

      Yah, being able to replicate it would be key.

      It would interesting to see if there are configurations similar to the OP's where this issue is showing up, though.

      It's time for dinner and a brew. You buying? :-)

      -Preston
      Columbia, CA. USA http://www.gildedmoon.com
       
    • Thursday, March 12, 2009 3:33 PM
       
       
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      I'm also a developer and understand what you are saying. I also know I'm not imagining the problem either. It's not necessarily RAM or CPU related either. My task manager will show plenty of available resource and the CPU just idling, yet I can count to 5 between simple tasks in Photoshop after a while of having EW2 open. EW2 also becomes much slower. Remember, on brand new Core i7 screamer computer (and two other XP systems). Close EW2 and system lights right back up as normal.

      I've tried closing as many processes/apps as possible to test and it always boils down to closing EW2 to solve the problem. EW1 was fine. The day I installed EW2 the problem was obvious. The link with Photoshop also seems apparent to me, alone either program seems fine. CS2 was fine. But CS3 and CS4 don't play on my systems with EW2.

      There's no doubt a conflict somewhere, could be in some other piece of software I suppose, all the systems have similar setups. All different hardware though.

      I don't know, it's just really upsetting that this is so stupidly slow for me. Not at first, but after a couple hours of use especially.
       
    • Thursday, March 12, 2009 4:21 PM
       
       
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      <quote>
      I've tried closing as many processes/apps as possible to test and it always boils down to closing EW2 to solve the problem. EW1 was fine. The day I installed EW2 the problem was obvious. The link with Photoshop also seems apparent to me, alone either program seems fine. CS2 was fine. But CS3 and CS4 don't play on my systems with EW2.
      </quote>

      Since EW caches temporary files in its own folder inside of the Temporary Internet Files directory,
      and also uses the Temporary Internet Files cache when previewing pages, try increasing the disk space allowed for temporary internet files.
      IE > Tools > Internet Settings > Click the Settings tab under the browsing history section.

      Also, how much paging file space is allocated in the machine?
      Have you tried increasing it?

      I would try increasing the TIF allocation first, because the default os only 50mb which is not a lot
      of space if you are doing a lot of image intensive work.

      Also the instant speedup when you close and reopen EW points me to increasing TIF space,
      because EW clears its temp directory when shut down.


      FrontPage MVP