Illustrator very slow

[kotaro]

I come to work today and all of a sudden Adobe Illustrator 9.0 is very slow. It takes up 100% CPU power. I have Win2k Pro, Athlon XP 800Hz, 512Mb. It used to work just fine. I tried to change the Power user to Administrative, but that didn't help. I uninstalled Illustrator and installed it again, and it is still the same thing.

any help would be appreciated
Thank you

 

[askIllustrator]

AI does the same stuff on my machine sometimes. Let me guess, it takes forever to do simple File and Edit menu commands like creating new docs and copying? Everyone always says delete your preferences but I hate that advise because I have a great deal of specific preferences. One thing you can try is going into your Folders control panel and revealing hidden documents, then do a search for files that are 40meg+. You might have some temp files that didnt make it through a crash. Also, Adobe doesnt scream on a PC like it does on a Mac, it has to jump a lot more hurdles to do the same stuff. One of those hurdles is clearing it's memory in between apps. Say you close AI and immediatly fire up your browser or something, AI is still deleting temps, saving preferences and cleaning up basically. I suspect launching other apps to soon or launching AI too soon after closing something else causes hick-ups. The funny thing is these hick-ups seem to be in files that are commonly used by both Photoshop and Illustrator. I think this because alot of the weird stuff AI does is solved by opening Photoshop first. Sometimes AI will hang at start up when it gets to Loading Startup Settings... and I will just launch Photoshop. As soon as PS finishes loading AI will too. So now I'm in the habbit of opening PS first everyday and the only problem I have right now is AI takes a second or two to copy.

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[mpunkt]

I had the same problem, i.e. slow startup and copying takes a second or two. I did locate a network printer causing the error. Hence, the following worked for me, which switches the default printer to one that is local, like Acrobat Distiller or the AdopePS:

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8. Make Sure Your Printer Driver is Compatible With Illustrator
Specify a PostScript printer as your default printer to determine whether there is a conflict with current default printer driver:
1. Choose Start > Settings > Printers.
2. Right-click a PostScript printer (other than the current default printer), then choose Set as Default from the pop-up menu. Do not specify a non-printing output device, such as a fax or modem. If a PostScript printer driver isn't installed, install the AdobePS 5.1.2 driver from the Illustrator application CD, or download it from Adobe's Web site at

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html.

To determine which driver a printer is using:
1. Right-click the printer icon and choose Properties from the pop-up menu.
2. Click the Device Settings tab.
3. Select the printer name at the top of the list and click About <Driver name>.
4. If the About dialog box includes the word &quot;PostScript&quot; (e.g., &quot;Adobe PostScript Printer Driver&quot the printer is using a PostScript driver.

source:

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/19ff6.htm

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hope this helps

m.