Freezing

[earthshoes]

 I often have as many as ten tabs open at a time and attributed the freezing to that the first time it happened. This morning it happened again, and I only had five files open. It wouldn't let me switch tabs, making changes, or save manually. I could close the program and it asked to save the files. Then I can reopen it and it runs normally after that.  I don't seem to be doing anything to trigger it, but it seems to happen after I've had the program open for a while.   Because of the size of the project I'm embroiled and the amount of time I have to work with, this is a bit of a headache.  I am hoping there's a solution for this soon. 


I am using Windows 10--a desktop with ample memory and until the update, I didn't have this issue.  

Footnotes:

I had to manually end the program in order to get it restart. This also a new development.  And it's just crashed again with only two files open.  My hardrive is no where near full and neither is the the thumb drive. There are no other lags in the system. 

This is also happening on my MacBook Air (OS: Catalina). Originally I blamed poor use of drive space and moved it to a thumb drive. That is clearly not the problem.   

I'm at a standstill, guys. And I've got a deadline. Please advise. 

 

[Chris B]

Hi earthshoes,

Unfortunately there isn't much to go on in this post. I often have a lot more tabs open than that at once as I'm opening customer files day to day. 

Do your projects have embedded documents in them? How big are they (size and resolution)? I would definitely steer clear of working off a thumb drive and stick to working locally. 

Is it imperative that you have multiple files open at once? For example are you referencing between open documents or are you forgetting to close them down? You should absolutely be able to keep multiple documents open but we need to understand a bit more about the documents you work with.

Also, what is the exact spec of your machine?

Thanks! 

[earthshoes]

Thank you for replying.

I was trying not to over inform. Sorry--

Specs on the PC I'm working on today are: 
Intel Core i3-4170 @ 3.70 GHZ
8 Gig Ram
64bit OS Windows 10 (whatever the newest update is--I have that)
930 gig HD with 730 free

I'm working with files that include simple vectors and 1 colored layers--no attached documents.  The end goal is a very simple (whimsical) animated ad. A hand drawn stickman jumps off a bluff, sprouts wings, and flies across the ocean). It's primitive, but I understand it, and the trial runs look pretty good. I am a writer and I format books for independent authors.  NOT an artist. 

Working locally is not an option. I work between two different machines because I'm doing this on the fly.  Internet is not always available in transit and I will save you the tale of how poorly the cloud has served me in recent history (much rum was had that day).  I now save back ups in more than one location and rely on thumb drives for incomplete projects. It is not my favorite thing. But neither are hangovers. 

  Because all I'm doing today is copying and pasting background (sky), I'm currently trying just opening two files at a time, hitting save, then waiting, closing the file, and moving on to the next.  When I return to checking consistency of animations and do the minor clean up, this is going to be a headache unless I find a better solution.  

The irony here is that I'm over 200 files into this project and am almost done. By the way, I've been using the Thumb drive for two weeks without issue until just a couple of days ago when this started on the MAC. But it's worse on the PC. 

 
      

[Chris B]

On 3/11/2020 at 5:16 PM, earthshoes said:

I'm working with files that include simple vectors and 1 colored layers--no attached documents.

So this is pretty simple stuff (in terms of document complexity), then? It sounds like you shouldn't be struggling having multiple copies of this open but it may be worth checking the document resolution and dpi to see if they are excessive.

On 3/11/2020 at 5:16 PM, earthshoes said:

Working locally is not an option. I work between two different machines because I'm doing this on the fly.

I wouldn't recommend working directly from the cloud or from a thumb drive. For best performance and reliability, you should be working on a local copy of your file and use the cloud or thumb drive for backing up those files. Of course you have every right to work how you wish to. Cloud and thumb drives, in my experience, are much less reliable. 

If you've got multiple files open from a thumb drive I'm not too sure what I'd expect though. It might be worth me giving it a go to see if I also experience any negative effects.