Scrivener behaves very sluggish / slow so it is not possible to reasonably use it. A search process does not end.
How could I make Scrivener work again?
What do you imagine could be causing it? How big is it? Where are you storing it? What kind of drive is it on? Are there a lot of pictures? or videos? Does a new small project have the same issue? is it constant or only gets slow occasionally? Are all your projects slow or only some? Are a lot of other things running?
If you take a part of the project and make it a new project is scrivener slow on that as well?
I do not have any idea what it is caused by. Projects are from 250 kb to 140 MB. Some with, some withoout images, some have few images, etc. No videos. Each project has that issue. It is occasionally. All projects are slow. No, not a lot of other things running. Stored on SSD.
This seems to say that it happens in all projects. It doesn’t always happen. It always happens. Needless to say I find this confusing. Of course one wonders what other things are going on or whether you are running out of memory. So, I suggest
- reboot your computer
- Run process monitor and make sure you have over 90% of your cpu available and say 50% or more of your memory
- Start a brand new project and paste a single text file into the draft section.
- Is it slow now?
- Paste 2 or 3 more text documents in as separate items. - Is it slow?
- If it is slow with only a few documents and lots of cpu and memory then pause your antivirus. Now is it slow?
- If you can get it to not be slow, then slowly add stuff or open other programs and determine what makes it slow. What changes?
Just as a comparison, I have a fairly typical computer. over 1 year old. I-5 processor, 8 GB ram and SSD drive. On a 1.5 MB project,
everything is immediate. Searches are immediate. Spell corrections happen so fast it does not interfere with my typing. I usually run with a few programs running including backup, browser with a few windows, email, PIM, password manager. Normally using about 45% of memory. I don’t hear a lot of complaints about it being slow and it is designed for speed.
Thank you very much.
No, no, not at all, very sorry for that. May be it is meant like this: All projects are slow." is resctricted by this: “Each project has that issue. It is occasionally.”
Yes, I had already tested / checked it before, turned of Defender, CPU / RAM usage (there is enough of them respectively the issue appears to occur independently from the usage / RAM). I couldn’t find a pattern until now.
A new created (while all of the other programs / the Notebook run like usual) test project runs well, also when creating new items in the binder, adding text adding / importing files.
Scrivener uses about 10 to 20 % of CPU when it is sluggish (for example with a project containing 2740 files, 202 MB big). I close it with the Task Manager then (it is not accessible after having started a search). Mostly or often this uses much CPU when Scrivener is slow:
Yes, the same with me, I would say:
Okay, the first thing I can see is a probably overheated system. Does your system do thing slowly in general, or is it just Scrivener? Please consider leaving the system idle and check temperatures. If temperature on idle is more than 70 Celsius degrees, you should… wait a minute… Core i5 5257U? Is that a laptop? It might need service if it collected dust inside. If dust is collected, airflow is blocked and it probably overheats. Overheating causes performance problems.
No, it does not in general, it is just Scrivener.
Yes, Laptop, a trashy Acer Aspire E 15 (Acer E5-573)
It is about one year and 4 months old. Yes, the same problem I had have before with other Notebooks. But Scrivener runs slowly independently of the temperature. It can be sluggish at 40, 50° also.
At the moment:
Your computer has a problem. For comparison, my computer runs when working on scrivener and other things at about 26 degrees Celsius. Laptops tend to run hotter, and I think in Fahrenheit, so a laptop should not run over 125 when not doing much and will slow down if it gets over 150. At 160 it is beginning to reduce life expectancy. The image is not showing CPU usage, but I assume you are monitoring it some other way. Especially bad was that the heat issue was on both the motherboard and on the cpu.
When it is overheating in this way, What is using all the cpu power causing the heat? I find it hard to believe that it gets that hot if only using 30% of cpu power. - Also, you might find it easier to track things with Openhardwaremonitor from openhardwaremonitor.org. It is an open source monitor that is better than Speccy. It also allows the creation of a widget so you can have a widget in the corner of your screen monitoring cpu speed, usage and temperature (other stuff as well). I have an article about using a widget with it on my website (steveshank.com). Search the newsletter articles for openhardware or something to find it.
I have two suggestions short of taking it in to a repair shop:
- Make sure all vents are clear and airflow is as good as you can make it.
- Buy a laptop stand for it with Fans. These are less than $30. Amazon has lots of them. Find one that runs off your usb port and has large fans (they move more air at a slower speed and are normally quieter). Their usb port for power should have a passthrough so you don’t actually lose a usb port. I’ve seen these drop laptop temperatures by 25 degrees (Fahrenheit).
Thank you very much.
Yes, the Acer Notebook is trash. If it were the heat causing that issue Scrivener should run well immediately after starting the Notebook (without heat) after having been switched off for some hours, I would think. But Scrivener runs the same way like it does now with a high(er) temperature. And I am wondering, why do the other programs run the same way as they always do if the heat is the problem?
These two items often use very much CPU:
At the moment I would say, the CPU normally is not running that high that such a big heat should be caused.
I guess, disassembling (may be that is meant) the Notebook to remove dust, etc. would be to risky for me.
A Laptop stand, yes, a good idea…actually I would think 25 degrees Fahrenheit does not sound that much.
Many thanks for the program.
Some minutes later:
Some more minutes later:
At the moment the CPU runs at 15 to 20%.
Many thanks again
2 things are apparent from the reports:
- you are running out of drive space on both the external drive and the internal ssd. Free up space on both. I recommend Bleachbit and some space checking program.
- Your Microsoft antimalware should never suck up that much cpu. Here’s their article on how to stop it
answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win … ae754b8649
By not covering vents, I meant not to put the laptop on your lap! or on a pillow or other surface that might cover or restrict the vents on the outside cover of the case, usually on the bottom and side of the case.
Alirght, thank you very much for your great help!
I posted in another thread about this.
I had a file that was being slow and annoying.
It was using nearly a gigabyte of memory. I tried lots of stuff.
I left the file open for hours when i was gone and the file had resolved the problem.
Excel used to do stuff like this when a file was open and used for a long while. The undo history was the culprit. Closing and opening would fixed this.
No sure what is happening here.
Thank you very much for this information, FredBob.
I see, so I also need such a file which resolves the problem.
Many thanks again