Indesign pauses 3-7 seconds on random commands

[mike_verzella@adobeforums.com]

indesign CS, 3.0.1 on winxp pro. athlon xp 2600+ .. coming back to the indesign window from another program, or selecting an item in the toolbar, randomly gives me a delay.. delay is sometimes between a 3 to 7 second delay - sometimes longer. this is more of an annoyance than a serious problem and is not impacting my quality of work.. however it is rather irritating when i am working with others in a group or presenting something.

wondering if it has been related to video or a swap file of some sort. has anyone encountered this?

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Is this something that just started happening or has this problem existed since you first installed ID?

Has your computer slowed down all around or just with ID?

I noticed a big difference in performance at my cousins house after defragmenting his hard drive. We can start by checking that. Go to Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools and analyze your hard drive for fragments. If it shows up mostly red then you need to defragment. It will also let you know if you don't need to defragment.

[mike_verzella@adobeforums.com]

it's happened since the day it was installed a couple months ago .. no other programs are affected, including other adobe programs.. only indesign seems to pause. it doesn't even appear to be using extra CPU usage. computer had defragged over the weekend, so my drive is fresh as well. i've thought it could be a display setting, such as how much indesign is trying to render on screen, but different settings have not change danything, and it will pause when the layout doesn't need a refresh - such as when i am going from one tool to another.

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Do you have a fairly powerful video card with the latest drivers installed?

What about RAM, how much RAM is in your system and how many other programs are running including things that run in the background like AntiVirus ect.

[mike_verzella@adobeforums.com]

somewhat powerfull.. geforce4 mx, integrated cpu. i think 40 meg shared. as far as i can tell i'm using the latest drivers.

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Ok, I am guessing you have enough RAM too and it sounds like a video card issue but it could be a number of things.

I will be back shortly. I am going to look for some answers.

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

I found some answers but they apply to InDesign 2.0 and Windows 4.0 I hope I can find something within the next 30 minutes because I have to leave for the day after that.

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

I just read: "You can measure the high 2D quality and the speed of the video acceleration when using professional software like Adobe InDesign 1.5 or Adobe PhotoShop 5.5. When you use it you'll really notice a clear improvement comparing to any previous boards you may have." about the Matrox Millennium G450. Is this comparable to the card you have?

I am really starting to think that your problem may be that you have too many applications going while using ID and it slows it down a little.

Try shutting down some programs and things that run in the background when you are using ID. It should improve the performance since. InDesign's minimum requirements for RAM on the box says 128MB of RAM which isn't a whole lot but that's the minimum you know what I mean?

Maybe someone else has had past experience with this issue and will have a solution but I still think it may have to do with the RAM.

I have to get ready to leave so I can't stay any longer to help you.

It's possible that it's network related too if you are working as a group or ID is not installed on the local drive.

Good luck.

[Peggy_Coquet@adobeforums.com]

I always guess video first on these kinds of slow-downs. But also check and
see if you have a bunch of stuff loading at start-up - MS Office loads a
bunch of stuff, and so does Corel. I always delete everything except monitor
calibration out of my start menu!

btw, I have WinXP with an Athlon XP chip (about 1.5gHz, I think), 1 gig of
RAM and a Matrox G450 dualhead, and I don't see this "pause" on my system.

Good luck --
Peggy

[mike_verzella@adobeforums.com]

first off thank's, guys, for all of your help, gabriel i really appreciate how you've been hunting for answers.

i also don't notice this problem on my notebook (running indesign cs with a 2.6mhz p4 and a 64meg shared ati card) or in indesign 2 on my 1.5ghz athlon at home...

something you said really makes sense tho:

at the time that i posted the ticket, and at about all other times that i happen to be using indesign, i typically have a great range of programs open. usually photoshop, typically illustrator, always groupwise, and any number of other memory hogs. although i don't notice such slowdowns in the other adobe programs, that level of multitasking might very well effect indesign for all it's..uniqueness. i'll run some tests when i get back in the office tomorrow on running indesign without some of these other apps open, and i'll report my findings.

[Bob_Levine]

> I just read: "You can measure the high 2D quality and the speed of the video acceleration when using professional software like Adobe InDesign 1.5 or Adobe PhotoShop 5.5. When you use it you'll really notice a clear improvement comparing to any previous boards you may have." about the Matrox Millennium G450. Is this comparable to the card you have?

That article is likely close to five years old.

Bob

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

That article is likely close to five years old.




You know what?, I didn't even see the version numbers when I was scouting for something InDesign and video related issues. Good eye Bob! It's talking about InDesign 1.5 PhotoShop 5.5 both which were released years ago.

This problem still seemed to be video related or too much system RAM was being used.

Judging from what Mike has told us, it appears that insufficient RAM causes this problem at the time of the slow down and the system may be defragmenting the RAM/recovering in the background while this is happening.

This is all pure speculation since I can’t physically be there to test the machine but we can deduce we've gotten to the bottom of this.

He said,

I happen to be using indesign, i typically have a great range of programs
open. usually photoshop, typically illustrator, always groupwise, and
any number of other memory hogs.




It’s highly possible that if you run a few less programs, the problem will become nonexistent.

[mike_verzella@adobeforums.com]

well, after using indesign for the whole day and limiting background activity to just a few in-focus applications as opposed to the typical..12..i had no pauses or freezes. i forgot to record memory usages, but i believe the problem has been, in fact, an over-bourdened computer. in the future i'll know what to look for when the program begins to get sluggish.

i'm relieved it's something so simple, and not a conflict with video or otherwise.

[Gabriel_Ayala@adobeforums.com]

Cool, thanks for sharing that with us.