change in CS3 behavior???

[Lisa Nikodym]

I've had CS3 on my PC for many months now.  Since I got a new PC a couple of months ago, opening files and printing have been blindingly fast.  However, in the last week or two, this suddenly changed.  Now, it takes 16 seconds to open a file, and 10 to 20 seconds to just navigate around the CS3 printing windows (for example, when the "Print" window is open and I click on the "Page Setup" button, it takes 10 to 20 seconds for it to pop up the Page Setup window).  Once I'm inside the Epson print dialog windows, those are quick, but everything to do with the CS3 print windows is painfully slow.  What used to take a fraction of a second now takes 10-20 seconds.  As far as I know, I have not changed any CS3 settings.

I also have GIMP on the same machine, and it opens the same files quickly, so the problem seems to be specific to CS3.  Has anyone else seen this problem recently?  Or have any suggestions of things to try?

Thanks,
Lisa

[BlasR]

Lisa,


try to change the ram the photoshop use to +

preferences -performance- memory usage

Blasr

[jerryrock]

When troubleshooting Photoshop it is always best to start by resetting preferences.

Hold down Alt, Ctrl, and Shift keys (Mac: Command, Option, Shift) while starting Photoshop. A dialog box will appear asking if you wish to delete the preferences file.

[Farmer]

Things to check would include:

the amount of free space on the drive you use for CS3's scratch disk

the amount of free space on the drive you use for Windows' pagefile

whether you have recently and properly defragmented your hard drive(s).

whether you have added or upgraded or changed any anti virus software

whether you have changed the auto update settings (CS3 can run like a dog if it's trying to autoupdate and can't for some reason)

whether you have disabled graphics acceleration within CS3

whether you have "lost" any RAM (check available - if a module has failed, you'd have less, could be an issue)

[Lisa Nikodym]

Thanks, Farmer, but we checked all those things (except for "lost" RAM, which I checked just after your suggestion), and none of those are a problem.  (Also checked BlasR's suggestion, and it has plenty of RAM.)  It's a nearly brand-new PC (just had it a month or two) that has plenty of RAM, plenty of disk space, plenty of everything.

My spouse did a web search and found a number of people complaining about CS3 suddenly running very slowly, and reinstalling CS3 seemed to do the trick for at least some of them.  Unless anyone has any other less time-consuming suggestions, in a few days I'll first try resetting the preferences file (probably not an issue, but just in case...) and then try reinstalling (ick).

Lisa

[Lisa Nikodym]

OK, I've found how to speed it up, but it's not pretty.  I searched around Adobe's user forums and found other people having this problem (it sounds like it has probably been a problem just since a recent CS3 update, but that's not entirely clear).  The problem occurs if your computer's default printer is a network printer.  If you change the computer's default printer to a local printer, it fixes the problem.  (In my case, I set it to some Microsoft Document Writer thing, since I don't have a non-network printer on my PC.)

On the other hand, this "dummy printer" is now the default printer for *all* other applications on my PC.  For every other application that used to automatically go to my network laserjet, I now have to manually change the printer.  Not a happy state of affairs.  

I searched through the Adobe web site's support section and found nothing on this issue there.  It was only in searching around the user forums there that I happened to find this information!  I do hope they issue a bug fix soon to avoid this problem, so I can set my default printer back the way it was...  

Lisa

[Farmer]

That's very interesting regarding the network printer issue!

Are you using CS3 10.0.1 (I presume you are and that's what you mean by the latest update)?

Are you just using Photoshop or any of the other suite of programs?

I'm curious because, here at work, all my workstations and test stations connect to printers on the network by default, (and that's a fairly large corporate network), and CS3 isn't giving me any problems whether it be a default printer set to one of the lasers or one of the large formats.

At home, my printers are also only on a network (a laser and a large format) and no issue so it would be interesting to try to discover what the main differences are to see if this can be fixed for you by identifying the source of the problem.

Does your network printer connect using a standard TCP/IP port or a custom port/software of some sort?  Is it a static IP or dynamic or using names instead of numbers?  Are you running any custom firewalls or QOS packet checking or other network utilities?  Are you using a hub or a router (unmanaged or managed) and it it 10, 100 or 1000?

[Schewe]

I'm curious because, here at work, all my workstations and test stations connect to printers on the network by default, (and that's a fairly large corporate network), and CS3 isn't giving me any problems whether it be a default printer set to one of the lasers or one of the large formats.

At home, my printers are also only on a network (a laser and a large format) and no issue so it would be interesting to try to discover what the main differences are to see if this can be fixed for you by identifying the source of the problem.

[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176051\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

The odds are (and it's been an issue for Photoshop on Win for several versions) is where there is a networked printer set as the default and for some reason, the networked printer isn't available...the problem, (slowdown) is multiple and repeated attempts to connect to the printer that isn't available.

The solution is to use a non-networked printer as "default" or make sure the printer IS available before launch.

[Farmer]

I agree, Jeff, that's got to be what's causing the problem.  What I'm trying to do is identify what's causing the printer to not be available so that Lisa doesn't need to have her system set to a default printer that's of no use to her - particularly as this appears to have been a recent occurrence there may be a change that can be reverted or dealt with.

[Lisa Nikodym]

Are you using CS3 10.0.1 (I presume you are and that's what you mean by the latest update)?

Are you just using Photoshop or any of the other suite of programs?

I'm curious because, here at work, all my workstations and test stations connect to printers on the network by default, (and that's a fairly large corporate network), and CS3 isn't giving me any problems whether it be a default printer set to one of the lasers or one of the large formats.

At home, my printers are also only on a network (a laser and a large format) and no issue so it would be interesting to try to discover what the main differences are to see if this can be fixed for you by identifying the source of the problem.

Does your network printer connect using a standard TCP/IP port or a custom port/software of some sort? Is it a static IP or dynamic or using names instead of numbers? Are you running any custom firewalls or QOS packet checking or other network utilities? Are you using a hub or a router (unmanaged or managed) and it it 10, 100 or 1000?

OK, let's take the questions one by one:

Yes, I'm using version 10.0.1.

I am just using Photoshop (CS3), Bridge and ACR.  Nothing else from Adobe (except Acrobat Reader).

The Epson printer is actually directly connected via a USB connection to my spouse's computer (which runs Windows XP home; mine is Windows Vista 32-bit); our computers are connected together via 100 base T.  Our computers get their dynamic addresses through DHCP.  There is also a firewall/router to isolate our network from the outside world.  Both computers are running "Windows 1-Care" firewalls, and they haven't reported trying to block any attempts at connecting the computers (which they would if it were happening).  There are no other firewalls, QOS packet checking, or other things like that.  Printing from other Windows applications to the former default printer (a B&W laserjet) goes quickly without problems.  It's a pretty plain-vanilla home network.

Everything was working great up to something like two weeks ago, when the slowness started, and we don't know of anything we consciously changed at that point (though all sorts of things auto-update, so it's always possible something changed that way).  It isn't a simple case of the default printer being "not ready", since it happily prints from other applications (for example, MS Word) I run.  I agree, somehow CS3 must be getting the erroneous idea that the printer isn't available for some reason.

Thanks very much, Farmer, for giving this some thought.  I'd be very interested if you can give us any insight on the problem.

Lisa

[Farmer]

I'll have more of a think about this when I get home, but off the top of my head seeing Vista and XP Home there and now understanding the topology of your network, I would suggest it's some sort of security related issue.

The two operating systems rely on communicating with each other to basically establish a level of trust depending upon who is logged in and with what privileges to each machine.  It can sometimes happen, for example, that you will see that a network mapped drive is not displaying available disk space until you click on it to force it to refresh.  A similar thing may be happening here.  It's going to be tricky to figure out exactly what, but a few questions along that line:

Do both users have accounts with the same password on both machines and do both have the same level of access (Local administrator being optimal)?

Does the printer on your spouse's computer have all the Epson software installed (Driver, Status Monitor and, if it's a large format (3800 or above) Remote Panel)?

If it has Status Monitor installed, have you checked the options to allow Network Monitoring?

The other path that's coming to mind is that perhaps power saving options have changed.  Worth double checking even though it's unlikely without you explicity choosing to do so.

[Lisa Nikodym]

Do both users have accounts with the same password on both machines and do both have the same level of access (Local administrator being optimal)?

We actually use the same username and password on both PCs; both have administrator privileges.

Does the printer on your spouse's computer have all the Epson software installed (Driver, Status Monitor and, if it's a large format (3800 or above) Remote Panel)?

We have the drivers, status monitor and remote panel installed for the 3800 (on my spouse's PC, but not mine), though we never use the remote panel.  However, the former default printer on my computer (the one that seems to be causing the trouble) is not the 3800, but a Brother laserjet that gets used for everything except photos.

The other path that's coming to mind is that perhaps power saving options have changed. Worth double checking even though it's unlikely without you explicity choosing to do so.

If you're asking about the PCs, the only power saving we have on is to blank the monitor after some amount of time.  Otherwise, we just manually turn them off when we won't be using them for awhile.  (And that's the way we've always had it.)  If you're asking about the laserjet printer (the former default printer), it's permanently on but in "sleep" mode until something gets sent to it (in which case it "wakes up" and prints).  I just tried the experiment of setting the default printer *back* to the laserjet, printing an image to the laserjet in order to make sure it's currently "awake", and then trying to open the print window again - the result is, it's still slow.  (So much for the "maybe the problem is the sleeping printer" theory...)

Well, it's time to get ready for bed here, so I'll check in again tomorrow morning...

Thanks,
Lisa

[sniper]

Just a thought, didn't CS or CS2 have a cache that needed to be cleaned or it slowed down?  I'm sure I remember that problem mentioned before somewhere, maybe CS3 has the same??    Wayne

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Lisa,

Since you are now in desperation mode, I'll throw in my 2 cents (but allow for depreciation).

I found CS3 much slower than CS2 when I first installed it, and I had lots of problems with slow file loading and saving (I usually don't print from inside CS, so I don't know if printing was affected). Among other fixes, I tried upping (in preferences) the amount of ram for Photoshop, but things seemed to get even worse. Then I read somewhere that plugins generally use memory that isn't part of Photoshop's allotment, so I tried lowering the Photoshop memory to the minimum recommended (low end of what PS calls the "ideal range"), and indeed things sped up by a good bit.

I have done one other thing which has helped. For my XP Pro desktop I installed a utility called "EBoostr" which uses fast USB thumbdrives as a general cache. This seems to have made a significant difference.

I believe that Vista has such a feature built in, called "Vboost", I think. If you haven't done so, I suggest getting a fast thumbdrive or two and engaging Vboost.

I hope this helps. Do let us know what you eventually figure out.

-Eric

P.S. The behavior I had when CS3 was running slow sounds very much like your printer experience, but with saving or loading of files. When I saved a file in CS3, nothing would happen for sometimes 30 seconds or more, as if the hard drive had gone to sleep (impossible). By clicking on various parts of the CS3 window until I got a "CS3 not responding" message, or even trying to see what was happening in Task Manager, it would eventually wake up and save the file (very slowly).

What I believe was happening was a lot of file thrashing as parts of Windows' own file handling processes were being swapped in and out of memory because there was not enough memory left outside of Photoshop to do the simplest routines. The same might be happening with your printing.

[Farmer]

Seems like you've covered most things already, Lisa, so I'm really stumped at this point.  Setup looks fine and I wouldn't expect it to be causing you a problem.

I presume your 3800 is on the network by itself, rather than shared via a PC?  Is there any option to do this with the laser?

From what I can see, Adobe Engingeer Chris Cox has confirmed what's happening and there's no apparent "fix" from within Photoshop other than changing the default printer.  Refer to http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2007/10/tuning_photosho.html and check the last comment.  You might like to leave a note of your own to see if John Nack ever received any further updates (seems likely not, since Chris responded) or to propose they look at an option to turn off that behaviour?

Since you tried having the printer "awake" and that didn't help, my last guess is that some change or tweak with Vista has changed the way or the speed with which it interogates the printer to send the information back to Photoshop.

Only other suggestion would be to swap the current arrangement - hook the laser directly to your PC and share it so your spouse can see it over the network.

I'm sorry we seem to have come to a dead end in resolving this better

[Lisa Nikodym]

I presume your 3800 is on the network by itself, rather than shared via a PC? Is there any option to do this with the laser?

I'm not quite sure I understand the question.  Both printers are currently hooked directly into my spouse's PC via USB ports.

Since you tried having the printer "awake" and that didn't help, my last guess is that some change or tweak with Vista has changed the way or the speed with which it interogates the printer to send the information back to Photoshop.

I agree that your assessment is probably correct.

Only other suggestion would be to swap the current arrangement - hook the laser directly to your PC and share it so your spouse can see it over the network.

Interesting suggestion.  We'll try that this weekend and see if it fixes the problem.

Thanks very much for your advice and the effort you've put into thinking about this problem, Farmer.  I'll post back when I find out whether moving the laserjet to my PC worked.  It will take awhile, however (it may involve physically moving the printer, since it may not be close enough to my PC for a USB cable to work well), so it will probably have to wait for the weekend.

Thanks again
Lisa

[Farmer]

I'm not quite sure I understand the question.  Both printers are currently hooked directly into my spouse's PC via USB ports.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176346\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

The 3800 comes with a built in network port, so you could move that onto your network (which means you don't need your spouse's PC to be on to access it) and it's possible that changing that could affect things overall and for the better.  It is a better way to network the printer rather than just through print sharing as you currently have it.

There are multiple ways to achieve this depending on your network setup generally and your level of technical experience.  If you wanted to try it and need a hand, feel free to post or drop me a PM.

[tsjanik]

I have no solutions, but thought I would mention that I too have had similar problems and some additional ones.  I had been working on large (500 MB) files with CS on a Pentium 4 with 2 GB.  When I got CS3, I upgraded the computer to a dual core with 4 GB (XP pro, 3GB switch on).  Much to my surprise, the new system was not faster and at times became very slow (e.g., 3 min to rotate, 3 min to save a file).  CS3 seems to have some memory leak problems; even after a file is closed, PS is using 2 GB of RAM.  The only way I have found to free up that RAM is to close PS and restart.   Perhaps related to some previous comments is the occasional message I get when trying to print:  PS3 will tell me I need to install a printer if I want to print (Epson 4800 is the default).  My usual work around is to save the file and print from CS, or reopen CS3.   The last time this happened, I tried to save the file and CS3 informed me that there was insufficient RAM to save!  I then opened a different file, closed it, and was then allowed to save the original file.  I have not had time to pursue these problems and was simply trying to get some prints ready.

[Farmer]

I have no solutions, but thought I would mention that I too have had similar problems and some additional ones.  I had been working on large (500 MB) files with CS on a Pentium 4 with 2 GB.  When I got CS3, I upgraded the computer to a dual core with 4 GB (XP pro, 3GB switch on).  Much to my surprise, the new system was not faster and at times became very slow (e.g., 3 min to rotate, 3 min to save a file).  CS3 seems to have some memory leak problems; even after a file is closed, PS is using 2 GB of RAM.  The only way I have found to free up that RAM is to close PS and restart.   Perhaps related to some previous comments is the occasional message I get when trying to print:  PS3 will tell me I need to install a printer if I want to print (Epson 4800 is the default).  My usual work around is to save the file and print from CS, or reopen CS3.   The last time this happened, I tried to save the file and CS3 informed me that there was insufficient RAM to save!  I then opened a different file, closed it, and was then allowed to save the original file.  I have not had time to pursue these problems and was simply trying to get some prints ready.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=176537\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Memory management is a tricky subject.

The /3GB switch is useful, but potentially dangerous.  If you don't leave enough RAM for the operating system, it will be constantly paging out to disk and that will bring your system to a halt (particularly if it decides it needs to expand your pagefile).  There are many other settings that need to be considered before using /3GB with confidence (first and foremost being /userva to ensure system stability by controlling how much RAM is left for the OS).

You also need to look at your history states and other things that will blow out your scratch sizes (you set to see that rather than basic image size).  Every time you do something the history has to record the previous version and that takes memory.  It's very easy to turn a 500MB file into several GB of disk space needed for the current iteration with history, layers, etc.

So if you're using most of your RAM for PS and the OS is paging out all the time and if you don't have enough physical RAM (and you won't) for the scratch size of your image, then PS is swapping out to disk as well.  If they happen to be the same disk it gets even worse.

You're right - you need to restart to free the memory or you need to clear your history.

[Lisa Nikodym]

Perhaps related to some previous comments is the occasional message I get when trying to print: PS3 will tell me I need to install a printer if I want to print (Epson 4800 is the default). My usual work around is to save the file and print from CS, or reopen CS3.

You're not the only one...I was having the same problem with CS3 a few months ago, and was unable to figure out what was causing it.  In my case it wasn't just occasional, but all the time (once it started happening).  I too just started printing from CS2 (which worked) until we moved the printer off the network port and onto a direct USB connection to another PC in the network, which seemed to fix it.

CS3 seems to have a lot more problems than all the previous versions I've used (PS4, PS6, CS, CS2).

Lisa