I know you guys (who are WONDERFUL!!) think you’ve found the source of the lag problem, but I have some additional info for you that I’m not seeing elsewhere.
FYI, I’m running Windows XP, SP3, on a fairly new desktop
I was having serious issues with lag, a few days ago…noticed that asterisk that kept showing up at the top, next to the file name. I briefly shifted to working in Word, but I was already spoiled after just a few days!..so in desperation, I did a System Restore, to a few days previous…and the lag disappeared…even when the asterisk was there. After that, I found these boards, and concluded that it was a coincidence, because you guys had found the source of the lag issue. So I’m patiently awaiting Beta 1.3…and besides, the lag is gone.
This morning, I suddenly started having big lag issues – nope, AV not doing a scan or update, checked to see what else might be running…nothing of any note…So I did a System Restore to yesterday morning…and Voila! lag is gone - even when there’s an asterisk showing.
I’m a medium speed typist, but I think that’s irrelevant…since I’m the only one using this computer/software/files, in my example.
So – this may well be a coincidence, or one of you geeky types (no offense intended) will say something like “well of course, and it’s part of what we’re working on”…but on the off-chance that it’s helpful, I’m posting…and wondering if anyone else has tried a system restore.
Laurie (by the way, my initials are LAG…but I’m guessing that has nothing to do with it
The asterisk next to the file name shows whether or not the file is saved, since scrivener saves automatically after two seconds of inactivity. When the asterisk isn’t there, it means that the file is saved and the asterisk shows up it means that the file isn’t saved yet.
i’m having a lag issue, too. i work on xp and find i must type faster than the program is prepared for.
midway through sentences, the program stalls and allows me to continue typing, but the words take up to :30 to materialize - and sometimes, not all of them do.
it seems to coincide with the program saving the file, because i see an asterisk next to the title (while the lag is in progress) and then i don’t and can type again.
it’s making it very difficult to complete a sentence.
I’m starting to notice the lag now, too. It seems the longer I use the program, the worse it gets. In fact, this last time, it started saving and now, a few minutes later, it’s still hung.
I’m having issues with lag…same sort of thing where I type and it takes 30 seconds for it to display. Definitely seems to happen more the longer I use it.
I found that reducing my autosave time from 2 seconds to 2 minutes seemed to help a bit but not all that much.
I do have numerous long documents in my research files–in my mind that’s one of the main features that will have me purchasing the program. So please don’t tell me that it’s too much info!
Overall though I have a LOT of information in Scrivener…probably 15 chapters of 3-5k words each then at least 20-30 research documents ranging from a few paragraphs to probably 2-3 pages of information.
Using XP, Service Pack 3 on an X61 Lenovo laptop, Intel Core2 Duo, T7300 @ 200GHz, 778 MHz, 1.96GB RAM.
Scrivener is the only program giving me issues right now.
I upgraded to the 1.3 beta, and I’m still getting the lag occasionally.
My project is up to about 18k words, the file I’m in is less than 1k words, and it occasionally, for no apparent reason, just stops responding for a few seconds. And the title bar says it’s “not responding”. And then it comes back.
I’m in Scrivenings mode, with the Inspector off, and the Binder on. Spell check is off, as are auto-capitalization, smart quotes, em-dashes, and ellipses. Save is still set to 2 seconds. I have the target for the project set for fewer words than I have (because I find the flashing of the green bar distracting, but I still want to see the word count).
Okay, regarding addressing the lag issue is it possible for those users who are experiencing it to systematically try the following and let me know the results:
First, disable the ‘Check spelling as you type’ feature in the Options - Auto-Correction tab, then continue working to see if you observe lag.
Secondly, If you do, then next disable the ‘Correct spelling errors as you type’ feature in the Options - Auto-Correction tab, then continue working to see if you observe lag.
Thirdly, If you do, then next disable the ‘Check spelling as you type’ & ‘Correct spelling errors as you type’ features in the Options - Auto-Correction tab, then continue working to see if you observe lag.
Fourthly, enable all spelling features and in the Options - General tab - set the ‘Save after period of inactivity’ to 15 seconds, then continue working to see if you observe lag.
Fifth, If you do, then next disable the ‘Check spelling as you type’ & ‘Correct spelling errors as you type’ features and in the Options - Auto-Correction tab keep the setting to ‘Save after period of inactivity’ to 15 seconds, then continue working to see if you observe lag.
Finally, post your Windows operating system, processor type, CPU speed and amount of RAM with your experiences. Particularly note any spikes of improvement or degradation from following the above steps.
I had done all the disabling of spell check, autocorrect, etc, before, and the lag issue continued – and would get worse, the longer I was working in Scrivener, but as I said before, doing a restore to the previous day, made significant improvements.
Last night, I installed 1.3 on the laptop in question, and then worked for nearly 3 hours, with no problem…so I think you found/fixed the problem. And since I upgraded to 1/3, I’m not having the flashing green bars on either the laptop or the desktop.
For the most part I haven’t experienced many of the problems that others have written about. However, after downloaded. BV1.3 I did notice the lag. The document, or chapter in this case, was larger 29KB. Much larger than most of my docs, which average to about 12 KB.
Otherwise, everything works really well (at least the features that I’ve been using).
I’m also having the lag issue. On a Vista laptop. I haven’t tried all the suggested disablings yet – I’ll do that in the morning – but I wanted to put in my two cents agreement with likely culprit being the program saving issue. I also have a backup software (wd anywhere) on my machine and I notice the lag issue seems to correspond to ‘filename.blah successfully backed up’ popups from the backup software – which probably correspond with Scrivener autosave function. I also have a bad habit of keeping my writing window open forever and a day, so I’m going to start with actually shutting down my computer tonight for a fresh start in the morning and I’ll pay attention to how long it takes to start again.
Just began experiencing a little lag for the first time, at about the time my main documents hit around 14,000 words in total. (There’s not a lot in my Research folder, so the bulk of the words are in there.) From the timing (basically whenever I paused for a moment and then kept writing), I estimate that it was occurring when the project auto-saved. I’ve modified a few files within the project during this evening, but most of my work has only been in the one, and all the others were only edited once, at the same time, some time before the lag appeared.
I always work with “Correct spelling errors as you type” off, ruling it out as a cause in my case. I thus disabled “Check spelling as you type” and hit Apply, then Ok, and went back to working. The lag diminished, but didn’t quite seem to disappear.
I re-enabled “Check spelling as you type”, then altered the save delay time to 15 seconds instead of 2, clicked Apply, Ok, and went back to writing. So far, this appears to have cured my lag. Since I’m either typing really fast with the occasional momentary pause or staring blankly into space doing nothing, and my lag appeared to be a saving issue as well, I’m really not too surprised - I’m only still for 15 seconds in blank moments.
As a further test, I typed while in 15-second save delay mode, stopped and counted down the seconds until 15, then began typing - and once again experienced the lag. Waiting an extra half-second until the * had vanished meant that I didn’t experience it, as did typing before 15 seconds had passed. This appears completely reproducible. (Well, I’ve done it four times so far. It’s a bit fiddly, but it worked every time.) At present, my lag is only about a second’s delay.
Interestingly, it also lags slightly after transferring focus back from this window to Scrivener, on about the second “word” (I was typing garbage) I type. Even if I wait for 5 seconds before beginning. If I wait 20 seconds (to exceed any saving time), it seems a little better, but still happens, on about the third “word”. It doesn’t happen again that I’ve found so far in either instance, only after transferring focus back to Scrivener. I’m still using 15-second save delay with spellcheck on in this case, and I only just noticed it accidentally, right now, so I’m afraid I can’t say if it was happening before my word count got this high.
Scrivener: Beta 1.3
OS: Windows XP Pro 32-bit with SP3
Processor: “x86 Family 6 Model 28 Stepping 2 GenuineIntel ~1596 MHz” (as read off my System Information dialog box) / “Intel® Atom™ CPU N270 @1.60 GHz” (as read from the Processors element in Device Manager). Sorry I don’t know which one is useful! (or applies?)
CPU speed: 1.60 GHz
RAM: 0.99 GB
Hope this is at least a little helpful. If you need more information or want me to conduct further tests on anything, just pester me for it: I’m on this forum whenever I’m writing my NaNo project in case I come across a bug I can maybe help report, and I usually check threads I’ve posted in before when I log in. Complex tests or ones that involve creating new projects and things might have to wait until the weekends, when I have more time, but I’ll still be happy to do them!
Thanks again for all the hard work! Scrivener is an awesome project - I’m glad to be able to help test it as it means I can maybe give a little back!
I am still experiencing severe (as in, I have to stop and wait for entire paragraphs to appear on screen while I’m typing) lag in 1.3; in fact, it’s worse on my machine than 1.2 was. My project as a whole is currently just under 30,000 words, and the document I’m working in now is 2500 words. There are sixteen documents in the project, all of which contain nothing but rich text. There is nothing in my Trash or Research folders. I have all spell checking features disabled (I always write a first draft with these disabled; it’s the first setting I change in any writing program and has thus probably never been the source of my lag), and my autosave interval is cranked up to 3 minutes. Additionally, it takes 30+ seconds to load my project when I open the program. Closing Scrivener and opening it again has no noticeable effect in reducing any of the lag.
I am using Windows 7 Ultimate (Aero turned off) with a 1.66 GHz Intel Atom processor and 2 GB RAM. I am not running any other programs alongside Scrivener, except for Microsoft Security Essentials. This lag happens regardless of what the performance/battery settings are on the computer. I tried running a system monitor while opening Scrivener, and there was no significant jump in CPU or memory usage to indicate the slowdown is related to insufficient memory or power; my CPU and memory usage never went over 50%.
Running Win7 (Starter) on a Gateway netbook–let me know if you need more info than that. It’s a reasonable machine.
Didn’t have lag problems at all in the original Beta; noticed lag problems in 1.2 when I was playing iTunes, but the lag dropped out when I finally closed iTunes. (I would like to be able to play iTunes while typing, though … ).
I upgraded to 1.3 this morning, and started a new file–I have a couple small items in Research, nothing in the Trash, and a couple scenes, nothing major. Right this second, 1100 words in the draft. I’ll have Firefox open, maybe a folder, maybe OpenOffice. If I type at anything like a normal rate, the words don’t show up for at least 30 seconds. They do all show up, nothing missing, and I suppose if I could just type and not worry about it, it wouldn’t really be a problem, but there’s something about the words coming out of your head, and not going anywhere, as far as you can tell.
But I started typing into WordPad and then pasting into Scrivener, which is almost as slow, dealing with copy+pasting, and basically staring at the screen instead of typing.
Okay, that is useful. It would appear the lag is still prevalent in beta 1.3 on Atom chipped Net books and older spec processors - admittedly with plenty of RAM. I will look into what we can do to optimize further in light of this.
Tried the steps, and this time, when I was done typing each time, I started counting (I’d have counted from the beginning of the lag if I could do that and type, but I can’t … )
19 secs
19 secs
3 secs (Also, this setting–which is the one I’ve been using mostly–would update words or part of the sentence I was typing as I was going, it didn’t freeze up for the entire time I was typing, so the 3 secs is only about half a sentence.)
20 secs
180+ secs (This setting updated about half of the section I’d written after about 60 second, and then took 120 more seconds to update the second half of it. They were a nerve-wracking 120 seconds…)
Don’t know if it’s useful or not, but I just thought I’d let you know that my lag is getting slowly but steadily worse again as the total word count of my project increases. None of my various subdocuments are much over 4,000 words - most a lot less - but my total non-research count is now 24,000, and it’s back to becoming noticeable again, probably 2-3 seconds long.
(Auto-spellcheck on, save after 15 seconds - same settings I ended up with in my previous post. I think I might turn the spellcheck off tomorrow for the sake of my NaNo and see how it goes.)
When the asterisk isn’t there, it means that the file is saved and the asterisk shows up it means that the file isn’t saved yet.