Freezing and Crashing

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

I need to tap into your wisdom, as I am experiencing some frustration:

Problem: Scrivener is freezing and crashing when I use the search function and when I try to compile.

Details: I am working on a fairly large research project. When I compiled last month, the PDF file was more than 2600 pages; the project also contains more than 500 images.

Everything was working fine until about two weeks ago. Now, when I use the search function or try to compile (custom and numerated outline) the program freezes for a couple minutes and then closes.

I tried reverting back to the last version, but it wouldn’t open my project.

I would appreciate any advice you can share!

2

Can anyone give me advice on the issues I am having with Scrivener freezing and crashing? These problems are significantly hindering the progress of my project.

Thanks!

3

I would suggest that you directly e-mail Literature and Latte regarding this at the tech support e-mail address supplied here literatureandlatte.com/support.php

A few wild guesses on my part, which are likely wrong…

  • Check that a reasonable amount of free space exists on your drive(s), using File Explorer.

  • Check that you aren’t running out of RAM (chip) memory, using Task Manager. Shut down other apps that are running at the same time. Scrivener’s memory use presumably increases signficantly if one does a “Scrivenings” (concatenated) view of all or large parts of a large project all at once… some other operations may result in similar increases and/or significant slowness. More than a few images pasted within a given document item can certainly result in slowness when attempting to work in that document.

  • Experiment with which filter to use for PDF exports (apparently also is used for compiles) down in Tools > Options > Import/Export > Export Converters. On my system, on which I have Microsoft Office 2010 installed, I get two choices for PDF export filter… Scrivener and Microsoft Office. Trying each for test compiles, I get PDFs that differ in file size and in Adobe PDF version number when viewed in Adobe Reader, suggesting they were produced via different PDF engines. There’s also the option of having a PDF pseudo-printer (such support “print to PDF” pseudo-printing) and doing a “compile to print” in File > Compile. Perhaps some of these will work better than others.