Digital Workshop

I have a problem running an Opus publication on my PC. It takes an age to load, and every subsequent button click/page change is also subject to unacceptable delay. However, the program seems to run normally on other computers. Can anyone advise me how to solve the problem?

Hi Roger

I'm going to throw in several suggestions. Hopefully, one might help.

Does this occur in the Editor, Preview or when Published?

If you set the properties to index the words on a page, then Preview and run a pub search, this can take forever.

Are you using Vista? I've have a couple of colleagues who are blaming Vista for slow performances. I can't comment because Vista is a long, long way under my radar.

What are your resources like? Have you recently installed new hardware/software?

At the risk of being impertinent can I ask if:
1. You've checked for viruses and malware?
2. Defragged your drives?
3. Checked the state of the Registry using something like CCleaner?
Given your experience, I'll be surprised if you don't do this regularly.

Try turning on the Windows Task Manager and checking the Applications, Processes, and Performance Tabs to see if all looks OK.

Rarely, when I've had unaccountable processing issues, I've checked for new drivers like display, for example.

Could you be using an external HDD that has been daisy-chained from a printer or scanner? I recently solved a speed problem by unplugging the HDD and attaching it to a powered hub. I was assured by someone who knows a lot more than I do about these things, that daisy-chanined peripherals can drop from USB 2.0 to 1.1

Have you or would you consider doing a clean reinstall of Opus?

HTH

Hi Ray

Thanks for your detailed response. I don't think any of your suggestions are applicable in this case. I'll double check though. It's possible that my old graphics card (Radeon 7000 series) can't cope, in view of the fact that the publication is a pretty weighty beast.

The problem only occurs when the program is published. And, like you, I'm not rushing to install Vista - XP is fine for a good while yet.

I may invest in a new graphics card to see if this cures the problem. It's about time I did this anyway.

Regards

If this is with a published file, have you tried republishing it?

I have in the past updated an existing publication only for it to run very slow when I republish it.

Something occurred during the publish process which caused this(I did notice that the publish time took longer than usual). I redone the whole thing a day later and my presentation was back to "normal speed"

The only change I made was to republish the existing imp.

Thanks. I'll certainly try that. But I think I may have to ask DW to take a look at the pub in due course.

Some things to check....

I run Win XP sp2.
On a recent Windows automatic update, or some other configuation change I made, I now get Windows Indexing Service process coming up. I don't know what effect on Opus. It is supposed to get out of the way when user uses keyboard etc.

Sentosa's suggestions are very relevant. ...check disk space and fragmentation. and 'yes' USB devices incl. keyboard/mouse... ext disks may factor in.

other possible, less likely:
* wireless networking... interference and resending packets
* (Firefox) browser... with lots of Browsing History and large cache.

Thanks for your suggestions.

For the record…

1. I have no viruses or malware (Norton and CounterSpy installed)
2. My hard drives are optimised/defragged regularly (Norton Speed Disk)
3. The state of my registry is checked regularly (Norton Systemworks and Registry Mechanic)
4. Windows Task Manager doesn’t reveal any problems.
5. Disk space is sufficient.
6. USB devices include wireless mouse, wireless networking, scanner, keyboard and God knows what else – but I don’t think these are causing the problem.
7. I haven’t come across the Windows Indexing Service, so this can’t be blamed.

As I say, the publication seems to run perfectly well on other machines (I may have to compress some largish PNG files a little more to iron out any marginal delays). On my machine though (XP sp2, AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.46 Ghz, 1.0 GB of RAM) it plods laboriously.

Suppose I should be content that the client has no complaints, but it’s very annoying/frustrating/disconcerting and I’d dearly love to solve the problem.