recently my Scrivener has started crashing repeatedly. I’ve checked that both Scrivener and Windows are the latest updated version. I’m using Scrivener 3.1.5.1 and Windows 10.
Sometimes it happens as soon as I start Scrivener and click on a different text file inside a project than the one it opened on. It will then say “not responding” and when I check my task manager, I see I’m at over 90% RAM usage. Which, given that I have 32 GB RAM, really shouldn’t happen. (Right now I have Scrivener open and it uses 200 MB RAM.)
Afterwards, I rebooted my PC, checked to make sure there were no outstanding Windows updates and updated my graphics card drivers, and it still happened again.
I’ve used Scrivener in this setup on this same laptop/using dropbox for syncing for three years now, and it only started happening during the last few weeks.
My first thought is that maybe anti-virus Software interfering, or perhaps one or more of the files involved with Scrivener (Scrivener’s and the operating system) are flawed on the disk. Or maybe it’s the ProWritingAid anywhere which may be connected (software I never heard of so this might be a red-herring)? Or any of the other many apps you have running? Still happen if you boot into Windows safe mode?
I can’t really see how another unrelated program like Steam or Discord etc would affect my Scrivener project files? Especially since the problem only appeared in the past few weeks. I’ve looked through the forum and there seems to be someone else with the same problem after the most recent Scrivener update, which I think would also fit my timeline.
It doesn’t happen every time I open Scrivener, right now I had it open without a problem, and I can usually just kill it in the task manager and reopen it and then it will work OK if the RAM problem happens. I’ll try if it happens in safe mode - but since it doesn’t happen every time I open Scrivener it might be hard to reproduce.
I have the same problem on my windows 11 pro desktop with 64 gigs of Ram. As well as my laptop. I do tend to have several projects open at once, none over 500 mb in size. The only way to escape is to close the program.
No definite things that starts this.
The Windows Event Viewer is sometimes helpful in these circumstances. Click the Start button, then begin typing Event and when the Event Viewer app appears in the menu, run it (as Administrator, if you can).
In Event Viewer, expand the Windows Logs tree item, then click on Application. If you have many events in the log, which is normal, it could take 5-10 seconds for the event list to populate. You are looking for Warning or Error entries around the time Scrivener crashed.
If nothing obvious appears under Application, check also under Security and System.
I just opened Scrivener - I opened a small file with only 5000 words and no character sketches, images etc. I clicked into a text file in the trash folder, then clicked on the First Page Header in the Frontispiece folder because I have the feeling this mostly happens when I click into a different text file than the chapter my Scrivener project opens on, and when I checked Task Manager, Scrivener was already saying “not responding”.
I checked the Windows Event Viewer in admin mode right away, but unfortunately no warnings or errors under Application, Security or System.
When I saw the unresponsive message a few seconds after opening Scrivener, it was using maybe 200 MB RAM. After checking the Event Viewer, it had increased to 1.2 GB RAM use. Now, a few minutes later after writing this reply, it’s already at 7 GB RAM, and I know it’ll just keep increasing if I don’t kill it in the task manager.
Of course, as soon as I typed this reply and killed Scrivener via the task manager, two error messages appeared in the Event Viewer:
I googled radar_pre_leak_64, but that tells me only what I already see in the task manager:
RADAR is Microsoft’s Memory Leak Detector so that error indicates an App/program is not properly handling memory.
After killing Scrivener, I started it again and did the exact same thing I did before - clicking into a text file in the trash folder, clicking into the front matter file, and nothing happened, Scrivener worked perfectly. Then I closed that 5000 word project, opened a 50 000 word project that has various character sketches and images attached to it, clicked into the various files and folders therein, and Scrivener is still running perfectly, using only 200 MB of RAM after I’ve had it open for half an hour now.
