This has only started recently. Whenever I am working in Scrivener, the screen will freeze periodically (“periodically” ranges from every minute or so to every 20 minutes or so, and sometimes not at all). If I am typing something at the moment, it will freeze and after that the words will appear on screen. Sometimes, the screen will do a “flash”. At first, I thought it was my laptop, so I cleaned it up and defragmented and ran virus scanners etc. etc. This hasn’t fixed the problem, and as far as I know, it only seems to happen in Scrivener. I checked if maybe the auto save feature was causing it, but changing the length of time for auto save does not affect the problem either. I experienced this problem before, but it was a long, long time ago and it appeared to have fixed itself. Personally, I feel like some program is interfering with it, but neither task manager nor process explorer has brought up anything out of the ordinary. I’ve tried disconnecting to the internet while I’m working in Scrivener, but that hasn’t helped any either. Any advice or ideas what might be interfering? This is driving me nuts .
Note: I’m running AVG and it did install some updates recently…I also had some windows updates recently, but I haven’t used Scrivener a lot the past few weeks so it’s hard to pinpoint when exactly the problem started
I am having the same issue. Scrivener had been working fine the last month or so but today it started freezing for a few seconds. As I type there is a delay then the text appears.
I tried typing in an OpenOffice document to see if I got the same response but there was no delay or freeze so it seems to be a Scrivener issue.
Any software that intercepts the keyboard input would be a potential cause of lag when typing, so you could check for antikeyloggers or text expansion services, global auto-correct tools, that sort of thing, and temporarily disable them to see if that makes a difference. A simple test is to try running Scrivener in Safe Mode and see if the freezing persists there, since Safe Mode prevents all the usual login items from starting and you’ll be running without interference of other software.
Other stuff to try…
If your projects are saved on an external drive or a networked drive, try moving them to the local drive and working from there.
If you’re working in a document with a lot of images or high-res images, you might try using linked images rather than embedding them, and using smaller thumbnails for working, which you can swap out for the high-res images when you compile. (Linked Images are explained in section 15.5.2 of the user manual.)
If your document is lengthy, try splitting it into smaller sections via Document > Split
If you’re working in a large Scrivenings session (i.e. multiple text documents loaded together in the editor), reduce the number of documents loaded–e.g. try just selecting your current document and the ones before or after it for the immediate context, rather than loading the entire Draft folder.
Well, I spoke too soon. The delay returned today after working flawlessly yesterday. I uninstalled Scrivener again and this time I downloaded a fresh copy. The problem remained.
I noticed that I didn’t have to re-enter my registration information with the new install. Are there files left on the computer even after uninstall that would contain the registration info? Scrivener gives no indication it’s a trial version.
I am using a Logitech wireless keyboard so I tried a wired keyboard. There is no delay now so that ‘seems’ to be the issue.
The wireless keyboard worked with Scrivener for weeks so I don’t know why it doesn’t now. It continues to work fine for typing everywhere else so it looks like it’s only Scrivener.
The registration information is kept in the registry so you don’t have to re-enter it and reactivate Scrivener every time you reinstall. You can remove it by deactivating Scrivener from the Help menu if needed. Scrivener’s other registry settings–preferences, recent file paths, etc.–are all removed when you uninstall.
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