Photoshop keeps 'not responding'

Gilly B

Gilly B

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Name
Gillian
Edit My Images
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For the past few weeks my PC has got slower and slower and when using PS CS3 it is painfully slow and freezes frequently with overlapping panes. When doing a simple task like USM it takes for ages to complete the green segments. It has started to do it on Crop, and other things. The pointer is way behind me and is slowing my workflow.

I have de-fragmented and cleaned the disk and also removed a lot of photographs onto an external HD and emptied the recycle bin.

Any ideas what could be causing the slow down? Please be mindful that I am not a techi.

Thanks Gillian
 
Gilly

Just check the preferences, and make sure you've enough memory allocated to Photoshop. Also following on from Cobra's suggestion, check the hard drive space available. It may be that you are running out of virtual memory space.

One last point, and it may seem stupid, but this has happened, check your Recycle bin is empty. I had a problem with a colleagues computer, that had 80% of its HD capacity lost 'cos he'd never cleared the bin.
 
Thanks guys. I have checked the virtual memory and it says the paging file size for all drives is 1524 mb. Is that okay?

I have emptied the recycle bin. How do I find how much ram has been allocated and what the performance is running at?

I am looking at the task manager and don't understand the figures and graphs.
 
It will be in your photoshop edit/preferences under performance
 
Gilley

How much RAM do you have in the computer?
 
Janice said:
It will be in your photoshop edit/preferences under performance
Click to expand...

Hi Janice - sorry, I had given up and gone to bed by the time you posted this.

Thanks for that, I would have never thought to look there. I have just found it and as I am typing this on my lappy, I can't screenshot it. Yikes, the information and changes on the choices (next - prev) tabs are useful.

It says:

Performance, Memory Usage: Available RAM 637MB, Ideal Range: 350-458 MB, Let Photoshop Use: 350MB (55%). The grey slider is predictably in the middle of the - and +. The History & Cache: History States 20, Cache levels: 6
Scratch Disks: only number 1 is checked (C drive) and the free space is showing 718.42GB

Is all of that okay then?

walls said:
perhaps run this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897426.aspx to defragment your pagefile

If the pooter was ok before and now it's slow perhaps the pagefile (swap file, virtual memory) on your hard drive is being used a lot as you haven't got a great deal of RAM. Install more maybe.
Click to expand...

In the System Properties it says the computer is:
Intel(R)
Pentium(R) D CPU 2.666GHz
2.66 GHz, 0.99 GB of RAM

Does that mean I have 1GB of RAM?:thinking:


Chappers said:
Gilley

How much RAM do you have in the computer?
Click to expand...
You are asking me??? I don't know about these things - I am only a Tog:shrug:;)

Careful what you advise guys, as I know no better than to action everything you say - no pressure then:nuts::lol:
 
With only 1gb of ram I suspect PS will use the page file most of the time, if it's gotten slow I suspect the page file needs defragging as suggested above.
 
Looks like you have 1gig of ram and 700gig odd of HD space .... loads all in all from what I can tell, I'm not that savvy myself. :thinking:

Are you online when it goes slow, maybe a virus or something...have you run any virus killers recently..

Try having a good clean out too, all those temp files and old addresses ... try installing this free cleaner ... Ccleaner ... its, small, simple, easy and highly rated.
 
pxl8 said:
With only 1gb of ram I suspect PS will use the page file most of the time, if it's gotten slow I suspect the page file needs defragging as suggested above.
Click to expand...

Am I correct in thinking then, that when I defragmented the PC last night by going to all programmes, system tools, defragment - I actually defragmented the whole pc, and you are suggesting that page files are different? If so, then if I download the link that Walls gave and follow instructions, it should help? :thinking:
 
Yes, the page file isn't touched by the normal defrag.
 
Forbiddenbiker said:
Looks like you have 1gig of ram and 700gig odd of HD space .... loads all in all from what I can tell, I'm not that savvy myself. :thinking:

Are you online when it goes slow, maybe a virus or something...have you run any virus killers recently..

Try having a good clean out too, all those temp files and old addresses ... try installing this free cleaner ... Ccleaner ... its, small, simple, easy and highly rated.
Click to expand...

Thanks for responding. No, not when I am online. Only when I am working on photos in CS3. I have cleared out temp files and emptied bin etc. I will go and have a look at your link.

I don't know much about virus killers. I have Norton installed and up to date.
 
Done that. I would like to know how much memory I should set PS CS3. It is currently set at 350b. Should I increase that to 500mb or even higher?
 
350GB should be fine but I would leave windows and photoshop to manage things, you just need to get yourself some more RAM I think - an extra 1 GB stick should speed things up. It's cheap and a very easy install.

try something like this http://www.crucial.com/uk/index.aspx?cpe=CHAWKuk It will scan your system and tell you what you need.

edit: sorry you mean physical memory not scratch disk space. I think the default is around 55%. You haven't got much physical RAM installed so I wouldn't mess with this. To see if photoshop is using the hard disk to perform tasks instead of keeping them in the quicker RAM look for the efficiency tab at the bottom of the image - usually this is set to display the size of the image but you can change to efficiency. If the efficiency is droppping to 50-60% when you work on a file, then it's using the hard drive and you'll notice a big difference by adding more RAM.

instead of reading my rubbish, have a read of this http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=320005
 
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