I’m a new Scrivener user with Windows 7
Two things seem to have changed in the last week.
Previously, when closing Scrivener, a small window with a progress bar would appear while saving my project. After 5-10 seconds Scrivener would close. Now Scrivener closes instantly. This is obviously not a problem but it seems to have changed around the same time as…
Scrivener seems to have high CPU usage even when idle for several hours. This isn’t a problem so long as Scrivener is the only open application but combined with other applications my system bogs down.
What is Scrivener doing that requires continuous CPU time? Memory useage is fine and it doesn’t seem to be causing any disk activity.
In my case the only applications running are Scrivener and Windows Task Manager. If I close Scrivener it returns to the first screen shot. If I re-open Scrivener it returns to the 2nd screen shot.
I understand, but what I am saying is that although it is (or seem) related to Scrivener, that doesn’t necessarily means that Scrivener in itself is where the problem originates from.
If I was in your situation, I’d google “idle app cpu usage” and see what kind of troubleshooting related thread comes up.
Of course, the obvious temporary fix would be to not let Scrivener be idle for hours…
I guess I wasn’t clear. I allowed Scrivener to idle so that it would have time to perform any “housekeeping” it needed to do. The high CPU usage begins instantly upon opening and doesn’t decrease even when I allow it to idle for hours.
I have not been on Windows 7 for years, so what I am about to say may not match reality.
In the Task Manager, click the Applications or Processes tab and sort everything by CPU usage. Is Scrivener using most of the CPU, or your antivirus software, or something else?
Are you sure that Onedrive isn’t the culprit? Since Scrivener saves every 2seconds of idling, Onedrive may go hogwild. I regularly pause Onedrive while I’m working and start it again when I’m done, so the software can sync files to the cloud. I close the computer when Onedrive is “Up to date”.
Depending on your anti-virus/security suite, it may be the ultimate source of the delay. I/O calls (such as reading disk files, scanning folders, etc.) can be blocked by anti-virus scanners and during that time that it’s waiting for the system call to come back, it counts as CPU usage (even though the CPU utilization in question is really just, “Hey, I asked for this file I/O thingy, are my results back in yet?”)
As an experiment, try temporarily disabling real-time file scanning (or whitelisting the Scrivener installation directory in your antivirus program). Then, restart Scrivener and see if you’re still seeing the same high CPU usage. If not, then you know some interaction between Scrivener and your antivirus solution is driving the CPU usage, and you can decide how you want to handle it from there.
I think I understand what you meant, but for clarity: If Scrivener sits idle for an hour, it is not saving every 2 seconds of that hour. It only saves if
You have made some change to the project, and…
You stop interacting with Scrivener for 2 seconds after that.
Saves only happen for the files that were modified, including the file that contains binder and metadata info, but not the whole project. The idle time seconds can be modified in Scrivener’s settings to be somewhat longer, but it shouldn’t be so long that you might lose significant numbers of words to a computer crash.
The compatibility mode is normally meant to allow older, not newer, software (Windows '95, XP, Vista) to run on the current OS. Nevertheless I tried it but without any effect. Scrivener says it should run fine under Windows 7.
