50MB psd taking ages to open..and other slowness...pagefile?

[wwwigz]

Hi, I've looked around and cannot seem to find a specific solution to my problem.

I hope someone can help!

I have a 50MB .psd file (photoshop CS2) that has 6 layers (basic line drawing, text layer, filled blocks...) and everytime I open it it takes 5-10 minutes to open! Then after the widow containing the file eventually opens, it takes another minute or 2 to be able to edit the file, and sometimes freezes me out. Drawing blocks of the file very slowly... and when navigating around the file, it often take another minute or two to re-draw.

I've looked at the network printer solution, and it's not relevant because I don't print via network and I only have one working printer attached via USB.

I'm thinking it might be a page file thing, so here are some specs:

I'm running XP-Pro SP3 (streamlined - it never crashes and works fine on most other programs), a P4 2.8GB, and only 1GB of memory. I used to have 2GB, but one has gone somewhere... I know another GB of memory wouldn't go a miss, but can't even afford that at the mo.

My drives are still the old IDE ATA's, main one is 80GB and the other is 120GB, but looking in Disk management in storage in Computer management software supplied with XP, it seems the letters are not in order..

The 120GB is split into 3: C:30GB, E:44GB, F:42GB

The 80GB is also split into 3: D:15GB, G:30GB, H: 33GB

Now, they are all on NTFS, and the 50MB file I access is on F where my pagefile is also located, the pagefile is approx 1.5x my memory.....there are also most of my other documents on that partition that take a while to open - like a 5MB pdf that takes 2-3mins to open. And my music on E disk often take 20-30 seconds to open in my music player (winamp)

XP was installed just a couple of months ago, on C drive, but the rest haven't been formatted in over a year. The disks are defragged every month or so...

And it's beginning to really waste alot of time! Maybe I've complicated things somewhere along the line as it never used to be like this!

Any help would be fantastic.

 

[BadBigBen]

It could be indicating a failure, be it hardware or filesystem...

I would check out the drive in using the manufacturers tools (e.g. Seagate = Seatools)...

another Q:

how fast does the OS load from hitting the pwr button to full screen XP (with all background stuff loaded)?


Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[kjv1611]

I think it's either a hardware error or else just you running into the limitations of your hardware:

1. Ram - you say 1GB went somewhere? Is it still installed, not showing up, or did you pull it out?

2. HDDs - Being they are IDE, newer hard drives are going to max out the capabilities of the controllers. The newer software (CS2 is new enough) is going to max out the hard drive's abilities, regardless b/c of the controller/connection.

3. CPU - The P4 may still be enough to get by, but I'd necessarily be surprised with working on a large layered image within Photoshop - particularly the CSx versions. But I think this is the least likely culprit, though it could play a small role.

Did the slow downs occur at about the same time you removed the RAM? Even with windows XP, there's quite a performance difference when dealing with demanding applications when going from 1GB to 2GB for sure.

Also, there could be a system issue (software), or malware lurking in the background, fragmentation of your disks, etc..

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[aich69]

Adobe Photoshop (and Illustrator) use part of any hard drive available as a 'scratch disk' - (Adobe's take on a page file)... by default it will use your system drive usually C:. Obviously the more you have on your system drive the less space Adobe has to use and I have encountered this problem myself when running low on space.

I would recommend changing the 'scratch disk' to a drive with more space and see if that makes a difference.

I used to have a handle on life... but it broke. Cpt. Red Bull

 

[tf1]

Without knowing your exact motherboard, I'd suspect the memory. Most motherboards around that era used dual channel memory - a bus architecture trick that gets a pair of identical memory modules to run at double-speed - usually at least full FSB speed. So the loss of a stick of memory not only means you are running on the bare minimum of memory for XP, but you have lost 50% of the speed boost.

Although XP usually runs well with just 1GB memory, a 50MB PSD is demanding and that loss of half the memory and half the speed may account for the terrible performance.

I suggest that you take a look on eBay or Crucial to see if you can stretch to replacing the lost memory or possibly upgrading to 2x2GB (4GB total). But do check with an on-line System Scanner - like the one at Crucial - to ensure that you get the correct memory solution.


Regards: Terry

 

[wwwigz]

Thanks for the replies all.
I still have the above machine, but I took delivery of a laptop recently, and have transferred all my data to that. It has SATA drives, and 4GB memory - so will do for now.
Maybe I'll drag out the old Desktop on a rainy day and get it filled up with memory.

Once again thanks for the help, this will no doubt be very useful when it comes to sorting that system out.