Affinity Photo, Designer, Publisher 2 programs freezing pc

[CRWillow]

I purchased and installed Affinity Photo, Designer, Publisher 2. Each time I use any of them, they freeze up or are so slow, they appear to freeze. Merge down especially is painfully slow to finish and sometimes crashes. Sometimes the save window won't appear at all, either by File>Save or Ctrl+S. Having more than one file open is a constant wait even in the same software. I've tried the usual helps none of which work, uninstall add-ons, don't run multiple programs, restart Affinity, restart PC, save often and open file under new name. I'm only working on 12x12 inch 300dpi for scrapbook paper not colossal files. I made sure my PC was capable of using the V2. Affinity V1 stalled and froze too; I thought V2 would be fixing this not make it worse. I hope someone can tell me what's going on. Should I just go back to V1 but as I said it is freezes (just not so much}? It seems no matter what computer I get software updates create a huge issue. Microsoft keep bugging me about downloading Widows 11 but I know it'll suck up way too much space forcing people to have to buy new PC just like iPhone and their useless updates. Okay venting over. I realize my PC is not fabulous and if I had a $5000 computer I probably wouldn't have an issue with V2 but is there another answer?

Windows 10

Processor    AMD Ryzen 3 3200G with Radeon Vega Graphics       3.60 GHz
Installed RAM    8.00 GB (5.91 GB usable)
Device ID    7E73E226-816B-4557-B3CE-DE7BB0EFE693
Product ID    00325-81911-10548-AAOEM
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch    Pen support

 

[MikeTO]

Hi, have you tried disabling hardware acceleration under Preferences > Performance?

 

[RichardMH]

Might need more RAM. I've been through  this and it was the only thing that worked.

[CRWillow]

Thanks for the response. I'll try that. Hope it works.

[CRWillow]

Thanks for the advice everyone. More RAM is an endless vicious cycle of getting more ram, then you update/upgrade and now you need more RAM but if you don't update bugs don't get fixed, viruses invade, software no longer supported. I thought I bought what I would need and could afford. My old PC didn't have AMD and V1 used to freeze up and slow down.

Here's hoping MikeTO is right and it's the hardware accelerator. I've turned it off on my PCs before thinking that's where it needed to be turned off and I don't think I turned it off from preferences. Crossing my fingers.

[walt.farrell]

28 minutes ago, CRWillow said:

More RAM is an endless vicious cycle of getting more ram

Yes, but 8GB is smaller than I would recommend. 16GB would probably be better. I've gone to 32GB on my new machines.

[CRWillow]

Disabling the  hardware acceleration seems to have worked Thanks MikeTo. Think this is the first time something really annoying was fixed really easily and free. Thanks for suggestions everybody.

[Anyone2]

I had designer 2 freeze on me tonight, after starting again it did have a recovery file to load from.  Ok i cant remember where to turn off hardware accelerator? win10  16g

 

 

[Hangman]

On 2/26/2023 at 10:33 PM, walt.farrell said:

Yes, but 8GB is smaller than I would recommend. 16GB would probably be better. I've gone to 32GB on my new machines.

Agreed though the minimum specs do state 8GB so I guess the assumption is that should be sufficient...

Hardware

• Windows-based PC (64 bit) with mouse or equivalent input device
• Hardware GPU acceleration^*
• DirectX 10-compatible graphics cards and above
• 8GB RAM recommended
• 1GB of available hard drive space; more during installation
• 1280x768 display size or larger

^* Requires:

• Direct3D level 12.0-capable card

Operating System

• Windows^® 11
• Windows^® 10 May 2020 Update (2004, 20H1, build 19041) or later

[RichardMH]

24 minutes ago, Anyone2 said:

I had designer 2 freeze on me tonight, after starting again it did have a recovery file to load from.  Ok i cant remember where to turn off hardware accelerator? win10  16g

 

 

Edit->Preferences->Performance

If it freezes again, use Task Manager to see if its a memory problem. 

[PierMax]

I've to wait 5-10 seconds for every icon or layer clicking, I'm using Ryzen  9 5900X + Nvidia GForce RTX 3070 Ti   32GB RAM  Windows 10

[mac1215]

I am having the freeze too.  I have 32 gb ram , windows 10. I cant even use the program to get to the accelerator. the previous versions ran fine

[RichardMH]

2 hours ago, mac1215 said:

I am having the freeze too.  I have 32 gb ram , windows 10. I cant even use the program to get to the accelerator. the previous versions ran fine

Have you tried holding Ctrl when you start up? You can disable Hardware acceleration from that menu. Might be worth clearing user defaults while you are there.