Srivener freezes every few seconds

Hi everyone,
Every few moments, scrivener freezes on me. It thinks for a few seconds and then it works again. It takes a painfully long time to type one word, or do any simple editing.

I recently switched to my Windows laptop because my mac crashed. It’s quite frustrating that I can’t write and edit quickly. Any ideas why this is happening? I don’t have a lot of other programs open. Even when Scrivener is the only thing open it does this. My laptop isn’t the greatest, but every other program works decently on it (such as Word). I’m not sure how to solve this problem.

You may have a different problem. I wouldn’t call what I experienced “freezing,” but I did have very slow typing where I would type and the characters wouldn’t appear, sometimes for seconds, and then would spit out in a rush. I upped my auto backup interval from the default (2 seconds?) to a multiple of that - 10? 20? - can’t remember and no longer use Scriv on this machine. Anyway, that fixed my problem.

I have the same problem, with very few programs open. Typing, selecting text, and using the arrow keys lag several seconds. Annoying.

I see the topic has been addressed in another thread.

The secret of computer problem solving is to Reduce your variables. When you do this you gain insight. Also, you will get better responses from forum members and from technical support staff. Given what you have written, there are easily over 500 possible problems. So…

If the files you are working on are in the cloud, try putting them on your local machine. That will eliminate all network, cloud etc. issues. If it is a really big file, try a small one. If an older file, make a blank new one. Does the slowness persist?

Also include your Scrivener version. The first 1.98 update was a problem and fixed.

What else is going on? If an antivirus is running, try disabling it. I’ve seen people complain about how slow some program was on their laptop, but actually, Windows was finishing an update or an Antivirus was scanning or Windows was indexing. If left alone for 30 minutes or so, then it would work fine.

Will it run ok in safe mode? As was previously recommended, try slowing down saves.

What else is running? What does task manager indicate is using CPU processor power?

What version of Windows are you running?

Take careful notes as you do these experiments and report back.

Are your projects on external hard drive or USB stick by any chance? Do you create backups on every manual save?