ID CS2 Win very very slow. 2

[BionicJohn]

Spec: 3GHz Pentium, 2GB RAM, WinXP SP2, Intel 82865G on-board graphics.

Editing in ID CS2 has steadily got slower and slower to the point where there's a 30 sec or longer delay between typing a character and it appearing on the screen. Often "Not responding" appears in the window title, but eventually the action is executed. And that's after 2 or 3 minutes for the simplest of files to open.

I can merrily use other apps simultaneously (Outlook, IE, Word, Acrobat, &c) while waiting for ID, so it's ID specific rather a general system weakness.

I increased the RAM from 1GB to 2GB but it made no difference, possibly even worse, but that may just have been my perception, expecting an improvement.

Adobe's KB acknowledges a GDI leak, and says update to ver 4.05 to resolve it, but that update has been been installed since it was released, and seems irrelevant.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/333/333097.html

I've tried different screen resolutions without any improvement, and I'm using the latest vid card drivers (from 2005!).

I've re-installed the whole Premier Suite, but no difference.

Searching with Google finds many people with a similar problem, but no solution.

Has anyone got any suggestions to get ID CS2 back up to speed, other than move to CS4?

Cheers, John.

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[eugenetyson]

I just think you need a new computer.

Dual core minimum, 4gb RAM, decent graphics card 512mb etc.


If you can't get a new computer then try access the bios on boot up and turn on hyper-threading - that would simulate two processors but might not be a drastic difference.

I'd post this on the hardware forums to see how you could speed up the pc without upgrading.

Or if you give them a budget they might recommend a spec for you.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[BionicJohn]

While the PC spec isn't fantastic, it's OK, and more or less meets the recommended spec of 4 year old ID CS2. There may be some hardware clash with ID but it wasn't like this a few weeks ago; it's just got slower and slower and now is almost stop.

Illustrator, PhS and Acrobat are fine - ID takes 30+ secs for a single character to appear onthe screen.

Would old Type1 fonts slow it down?

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[eugenetyson]

I don't think so? Perhaps you have too many fonts loaded or something? But I can't see how that would affect it.

Yes, it meets the specs of IDCS2, but as your computer got older it got more updates, and more software, and that software gets updated, so eventually more and more memory is being taken up and ID is left to use the scraps. It's not anybodies fault, except the fact that other Apps were updated to gear better with the operating system - perhaps.


Is it just the one file that it happens to or is it any files, old and new documents?

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[BionicJohn]

Hmm… The pub is generated from an ancient template - which I think had it roots back in PM5 days about 15 years ago. That could well be a factor.

I rarely create new docs… as you may have guessed.



Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[eugenetyson]

Well that could be it. Which each save and save as gunk builds up in the code. Left-overs if you like.

Try doing a Save As first.

If that doesn't work go to File>Export and choose Interchange (.inx)

Open that (it opens as untitled) and see if that helps.

.inx is a unverisal file format for cross platform, between older and newer versions of InDesign and also a proven way to degunkify a file that is acting weird.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[spamjim]

I've run CS2 on systems with less punch and there are no delay issues. The system should be fine, even with system updates and a muddied system registry that often clog the works over time. I'm not familiar with the video card but any onboard graphics can always be upgraded to a dedicated card (unless you are on a laptop).

You may also consider trashing your preferences (not necessarily done when you reinstall). You may still be working with the same buggy preferences after a reinstall.

 

[BionicJohn]

OK, guys, I think we're there.

I created a new file using the interchange, which seemed marginally better, and then created a new template, removing the "Normal" style which is created when importing from Word.

I trashed the prefs, and things started looking up, until I started to import the text from Word. InDeign ground to a halat, and after several minutes of "Not responding" did get there.

I closed the file without saving anything, but I was suspicious of the Word file.

It now turns out the Word file was originally Word 2007 but sent to me as Word2003 as the sender didn't have Word2007 and converted it.

So I saved the Word file as basic TXT and placed that - Bingo! High speed InDesign was back, and applying the Style Palette (minus "Normal") did the biz.

So importing straight from Word seems to be the problem, which reminds of the old PM days - Aldus/Adobe and MS wouldn't fully collaborate about the details of an import filter.

Many thanks for bearing with me, and giving me ideas.

Take care, and Happy ID'ing!

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[eugenetyson]

Save it as a RTF if you want to keep formatting such as bold and italic etc.

Cool you're sorted.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[BionicJohn]

Perhaps being of the old school, I prefer clean TXT!



Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[eugenetyson]

Welcome to the new school

Well it could save time on future projects.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[spamjim]

RTF is still a bit of a muddy format from Word so I am also fine studying at the 'old school' and mostly place plain text or XML. Just look at the RTF nonsense from Word in a plain text editor. You can see fonts and colors that were not even specified in Word.

 

[eugenetyson]

Yeh word styles are nonsense. But in some instances it makes sense to use RTFs.

Just to be aware of it.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[spamjim]

If fond of RTF, it may make sense to use RTF from OpenOffice, which creates cleaner files than Word.

Quick demo:
3 lines of text in Word as an RTF file = 8 kb
3 lines of text in OpenOffice as an RTF file = 4 kb

OpenOffice is also good to clean up and resave RTF or DOC files produced by Word.

 

[eugenetyson]

Well anytime I make RTFs from Word I import them to a Blank File in InDesign.

I then Export that out of InDesign as RTF, and that helps rid the file of the useless Word Styles and leave only the styles that are actually used.

I then bring in my InDesign RTFs into the layout.

Once I have that in I run this script preservelocalformatting.jsx (

http://indesignsecrets.com/downloads/PreserveLocalFormatting.jsx)

That then creates character styles for; bold, italic, bold italic, superscript, subscript, etc.

Once that is done I go to Type>Find Font and make sure no fonts are funny (like I have MetaPlusNormal which has no Bold style, so for that I need to change it to MetaPlusBold)


Once that's done (takes about 30 seconds) the file is ready to be edited and styled to my hearts content.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/

 

[BionicJohn]

Don't MS bring out a new variation of RTF every time there's new version of Word?

Word styles also leave a lot to be desired, and we'll not mention the HTML in generates.

Liverpool: Capital of Culture 2008
Anfield: Capital of Football since 1892
Iechyd da! John
Glannau Mersi, Lloegr.

 

[eugenetyson]

That's why I degunkify the RTF that Word makes by importing it to a blank InD file and then Exporting it again as RTF.

Then the RTF is cleaned of all the useless styles generated by word.

Microsoft develop the RTF, I'm not sure when they release new variations.

But trust me on the RTF and bringing it to InDesign and then re-export it.

http://www.doozler.blogspot.com/