Scrivener (3.1.5.1) has been freezing often and unpredictably since the update. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Scrivener already. Any suggestions?
Did you search the forum ?
I believe someone else had this issue a short while back.
Can’t recall if the issue ended up fixed, but it’d be worth the search.
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I have searched the forum. I didn’t stumble across that post. If you find it, can you link it here?
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I had the same problem more on my desktop, than laptop but seems to have stopped since a recent windows update. When it occurred, the ram use would jump and happened more when had more projects open at once.
Thank you. I’m going through the suggestions but so far, none have worked. I’ll try some more tomorrow.
I’m glad that worked for you.
Remarkably, I’m still having issues and none of the solutions in the other threads I’ve found have done anything to fix the erratic freezing. 
I don’t know if that’s redundant, but did you whitelist Scrivener in your antivirus ?
Unfortunately, I didn’t notice any improvement, but thank you for the suggestion.
I may walk away from using Scrivener for a while and come back to it another time.
Just adding to the conversation because I’m also having this problem. However, I think it started when I moved to a new computer rather than when I updated. I did some investigating but didn’t find a solution. We’d have to get input from a dev to see if anything I turned up even matters.
First, I watched Process Monitor (Windows systool) to see what was happening when it freezes. Scrivener is trying to run a CreateFile operation (which is also used just when updating a file), and it’s returning a “NAME NOT FOUND” error. It lasts for about two seconds, the same length of time as the freeze. The locations it’s trying to access are:
- C:\Users<my username>\AppData\Local\mime
- C:\ProgramData\mime
- C:\Program Files\Scrivener3\mime
- C:\Program Files\Scrivener3\data\mime (this one is actually a “PATH NOT FOUND” error, but same concept)
Sure enough, those files don’t exist. However, the “NAME NOT FOUND” message happens a lot with Windows apps. MIME may refer to a category of Windows file types, which get used by apps to interface with mail clients or browsers. I’m guessing this was part of earlier code that just didn’t get cleaned up. I can’t say that this relates to the problem… it could just be the last event that happens before the freeze, not the freeze itself.
Around the same time, there’s also a buffer overflow on both the main .scriv file and the active document (RTF file) I was typing in. I don’t know a lot about this, but while it’s not a good thing, it also probably wouldn’t freeze the software for 2 seconds.
The other thing I did was enable logging within the software. Long story short, I didn’t see anything too strange other than some unrelated errors and warnings, which isn’t unusual. However, having logging enabled crashed the program after typing a few sentences. It’s possible it didn’t show anything in the log because the logging task also crashed.
Try white-listing Scrivener in your anti-virus.
It’s is a long shot, but worth a try.
Best,
Jim
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I think we’ve both done that, but it’s a good callout. I had a very similar problem when I was storing the project files in OneDrive, so others can try moving their project files to another place on their computer. However, that’s not the case for me this time.
Perhaps see if your folder is set to be compressed automatically.
(Right click in file explorer / properties / advanced)
I never set my stuff like that so I can’t really tell, but I can’t see it being a good thing.
@alannah2l
I haven’t figured out what’s actually causing the problem, but I have discovered that it’s related to autosave. A workaround for the time being can be to increase the autosave time. It’s 2 seconds by default, which is exactly when it freezes, and it freezes every time even if you don’t notice it. However, if you increase it to 20 seconds, the freezing will very rarely happen.
Change the autosave interval by clicking File → Options → Saving (second one down on the left) → Auto-save after. Raise it to 20 seconds and click OK. Just FYI, this will apply to all projects, not just the open one.
The freezing does still occur every 20 seconds when it saves, but if you haven’t been typing for 20 seconds, chances are that you won’t even notice it. You’d have to start typing again precisely between 20 and 22 seconds when it freezes.
Just keep in mind that if you’re typing like a crazy person after some huge inspiration, the autosave won’t occur until you’ve stopped for 20 seconds. If this bothers you, you can either reduce it further or just start using the manual save hotkey (ctrl-S on Windows).
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