Photoshop 7 opens files really slow!

[Greg Pabst]

I have had PS7 intalled on my brand new work computer (WinXP, P4 2.4GHz, 1GB Ram) for 4 months with no problems. It recently started opening files really slow. It doesn't matter what type of file it is. It can be a .gif, .jpg or a PSD file, all open equally slow. I haven't changed anything on my computer recently. My swap file is setup on a seperate hard drive from my C drive where the page file is setup. The swap partition is 6 GB, which should be plenty big. The files I am trying to open aren't big; it takes 2-3 minutes to open a 12K image. I have upgraded to 7.0.1 and it didn't help. I have also tried unintalling and reinstalling and the problem persists. After one uninstall I even deleted the left over files that are left behind after uninstall. It seemed to make them open a bit faster, but after a day PS was back to taking forever to open the files again.

If anyone can help me with my problem, I would greatly appreciate it.

[Greg Pabst]

I do have all the latest Windows updates. I did all the updating last week, but that hasn't helped anything. All the computers in our network are WinXp, so we aren't on a mixed system environment, so I don't think that is causing the problem. I'll do what the briansbuzz article suggests and see if that helps anyway.

[Daryl Pritchard]

Hi Greg,

While I'd not expect to find it as likely on a work PC as one at home, have you recently had Norton Utilities or SystemWorks installed? If so, try disabling Norton Protection (in the Properties of the Protected Recycle Bin) and see if that resolves your problem. This is something that can be done while Photoshop is open and, if it is the cause, you'll see an immediate improvement. Note, I run SystemWorks 2003 concurrent with PS7 on a WinXP Pro system that has Norton Protection enabled, and I have no problem. Regardless, this was a common problem with PS6/Win2000 and remains so for some PS7/WinXP users I believe.

Regards,

Daryl

[Greg Pabst]

I did have Norton Anti-Virus installed recently. The problem was happening before I installed it though. I uninstalled it yesterday, as it was a free trial, and the problem is still there. So, I don't think that anything Norton related is causing it. Thanks for the tip though. This problem is driving me crazy. I just think it's stupid that it takes 3 minutes to open a 3k image.

[Greg Pabst]

I just did an experiment. Based on what Dave said above about mixed OS networks, I unplugged my network cable. Photoshop immediately worked perfectly! I guess other computers in our office building are causing the problem. Everyone in our office is using XP, but apparently not everyone in our building is. I didn't think that other offices would cause this problem, but I guess they are. Now I just have to figure out how to get this fixed. I don't want to have to disconnect from the net everytime I want to use Photoshop. :-)

[dave milbut]

apply the reg fix that brian livingston describes in his article...

[dave milbut]

edit: btw, brian's da man! he worked as a columnest for Info World for a long time. Recently let go and started an on-line addition of his column to great success. After about 2 months he got picked up by IW's competetor e-Week (formerly PCWeek). He's doing biweekly columns there.

Any window user can benifit by signing up for his free newsletter available from that link. There's always something topical and useful!

No, I don't work for Brian. Just a fan. He's pulled my bacon out of many a fire!

[Joseph Croasdaile]

I am having the same issue at work and have done the patch recommended
on Brian's page as well as unplugging from the network. I did a test
on my 2.3 GHZ PC at home and my 3 GHZ at work and got very different
results.

Opening a 115mb file
Home 30 secs
Work 1 minute 15-45 seconds

It starts to open the file but the status bar pauses then Photoshop
shows as it is not responding... thus the application turns white for
about a minute and finally opens the document. I have just don't
understand why it would be so slower on what is a faster machine. I
have tried disabling the Symantec virus scan, but I am wondering what
else could cause photoshop to perform so poorly. I have tossed the
pref files by doing the ctrl + alt + shift... updating drives and
de-fragging... any other suggestions?