MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Just wondered if anyone could shed any light on this... I have a two year old desktop (HP Pavillion) which is used for photo processing, almost exclusively. There is 315G of space left on the 500G hard drive.
Over the last year, it has been running very slowly. I use Lightroom and usually just import all the photos from weddings (typically 1-2000). It used to cope with this fine, but these days it's taking about 20 seconds before I can preview an image. My workflow has gone to pot - so frustrating.
I have a 15G Sandisk Cruze stick dedicated to Readyboost which seems to make bot-all difference. I've run a defragand disk cleanup and cleared temporary internet files.
There are loads of processes running when I open task manager, but I don't know what any of them are, so am a bit wary of stopping them...
Is there anything else I can do to speed up Lightroom?
Could it be your anti-virus scanning files?
Could be - I'm using MSE. I can't see any obvious settings in there for stopping it inspecting images, but have just turned off "scan outgoing files"...
Windows has a habit of slowing down over time as junk accumulates and software doesn't uninstall completely. The best solution would probably be a clean install of the OS followed by installing just the stuff you need but that can be a hassle.
Try and uninstall any stuff you don't need; I'd recommned running a de-frag the harddrive, but you've already done that. You could use Task Manager to see if there's anything obviously hogging resources (some programs do seem to go wrong and eat up cpu cycles).
-- Edit -- Just spotted the comments about MSE, I think there should be an option in there somewhere to exclude files from scanning.
Running vista per chance? Vista likes to constantly run "maintenance" in the background, disk defrag etc which can get very annoying - there are ways to stop it from happening if it is Vista
Thanks PJay - yes I've just checked, and you're quite right, there is, so I've excluded any Adobe files and 'My Pictures'. Will see if that makes a difference.
Not Vista.
if you're reintalling, ninite makes it a bit less painful IME
Careful with not scanning adobe files viruses do like to hide in them.
Drac - yes that did cross my mind - will just have to remember to take Adobe off the list when updating software and so on. Really, really can't be bothered doing the whole re-install thing, 'cos I've got so much processing to do!
Have just optimised the catalogue in Lightroom, and that does seem to have made a big difference. Thanks for all the help.
CC'cleaner really helps here IMO.
I find that I can do a google on the task manager tasks - and then turn off all sorts of bits.
Biggest boost to speed I found was dumping iTunes recently...
Cheers Matt - will try googling a few of them. Just by the by, what does Microsoft Silverlight actually do? Would love to scrap it as it's huge!
Perhaps do a defrag? With all those photos there will be loads of thumbnail files generated too. I think this could make things messy.
Silverlight is MS's version of Flash, basically. Uninstalling it shouldn't cause any major issues.
If you fancy and are free during the day tomorrow, I could do some remote support with you?
Cheers Cougar - if you email me your number and let me know a good time to call, I'd really appreciate that! I'm at info[AT]emerson photographyDOTco.uk
How much RAM does the computer have installed? 512mb? 1Gb? I had a 3GHz dual core PC that was grinding to a halt despite yearly formats/clean installs. Eventually it started to die (various hardware probs)
I inherited another PC, lower spec. Also dead slow. I was going to use parts to repair the other but it turned out the motherboard and power supplies were incompatible so never bothered. But I put all the RAM into the inherited one (Giving it 2x 256mb and 2x512mb) and it was twice as fast just loading windows. Stuck it all in my broken PC and after coaxing it to turn on, that was noticeably faster.
Just shows how much of a bottle neck the RAM can be. I suggest finding out what your PC takes and how much it can take, and then order 1 or 2Gb. Don't try and run the old stuff, it can have a detrimental effect when pair up with larger sticks.
Can someone remind me how to get at the system info please? I have always meant to upgrade the RAM - don't remember it being particularly impressive when I bought the computer...
START-> Control Panel -> System and Security.
Should see it there as an option.