Why is it taking so long to launch?

[CésarV]

Hello,

Since Affinity Photo v2, I noticed an increase time to launch the application, I find this very frustrating, I don't know it's me or the software or my internet connexion.

I am on a AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core 4.05 GHz with 32 Gb of RAM, Windows 11 Pro, and it take 2 min and 10 sec to launch, and this is after a second launch (so windows already cached the application files) !! I remembered the v1 took onyl some seconds.

While theses 2 minutes, the task manager register no activity of the processor, the RAM stay at 190 Mb, I don't know what is it doing in all this time.

 

Is a way to check what step is during to long in the initialization process ? Is there a server check that don't work well of something similar ?

Thanks,

 

[AlainP]

On my system it takes 8 or 9 seconds.... maybe too many fonts... 

[CésarV]

I have just 82 fonts, most of them are default system, I only installed about 10.

I work on SSD and have a Nvidia GTX 980 Ti.

I enabled/disabled OpenCL usage in the preferences but it don't changes anything.

 

I also tried to Ctrl + launch the software, check all the boxes and clear all of them, it still take 2 min to launch.

[CésarV]

Sorry, after clearing all the preferences, and after a reboot system, it now takes 6 sec to start ! 😁

I hope it will help other people.

(I wonder if it's because I had a very large file in the backups preferences folder...)

[Pšenda]

22 minutes ago, CésarV said:

because I had a very large file in the backups preferences folder

But this would have to be reflected in the increased activity of working with the disk.

[dennisqdw]

I've had this problem too for some time. Where is the backups preferences folder?

I've found another thread about resetting with the ctrl key, which I'll try soon. And report back. But still wondering about that folder. thanx.

[CésarV]

On Windows, it's :

C:\Users\your_username\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\backup

You may need to display hidden folders.

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, CésarV said:

On Windows, it's :

C:\Users\your_username\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\backup

You may need to display hidden folders.

That depends on whether you're using the EXE/MSI version or the MSIX version. Your path is for the EXE/MSI. For the MSIX it would be within %userprofile%\.affinity

[PaoloT]

Is there a shortcut to clean the older caches at launch (at least on the Mac)? I know I could use Onyx or the cron commands, but I suspect the Affinity programs are the only ones, among the ones I use, that may have this issue.

Paolo

 

[dennisqdw]

Found the directory, nothing in there. Some files in autosave that I deleted just in case. I'll try ctrl next. thanx --ds

[dennisqdw]

CTRL didn't help either. I'll do an uninstall and reinstall and see what happens. But fwiw I have a lot of fonts, but not in the Affinity fonts folder that settings is referenced to. Can that be a problem, and if so how do I get around it? thanx --ds

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, dennisqdw said:

But fwiw I have a lot of fonts, but not in the Affinity fonts folder that settings is referenced to. Can that be a problem, and if so how do I get around it?

Yes, if you have a lot of fonts installed, that will slow down the initialization.

• How many is "a lot", for you?
• During startup, the Splash screen will display a "Loading Fonts" message. If your delay is while that message is showing, that may be the problem.

[Alfred]

37 minutes ago, dennisqdw said:

Can [a lot of fonts] be a problem, and if so how do I get around it?

If ‘a lot of fonts’ is a few hundred, that shouldn’t be a problem on a modern computer. If it’s thousands, you might want to consider uninstalling most of them and using a font manager to load them temporarily as needed on a per-project basis.

[dennisqdw]

So apparently uninstalling affinity (the msix) version is not so easy. There is no uninstall option anywhere, nor an uninstall.exe file. I did find one solution from an internet search that says I have to do it from the affinity website itself, but I can't seem to find where that is. After someone tells me how to uninstall this I'm going to install the exe version and see if that solves any of my problems. thanx --ds

[dennisqdw]

Re the fonts, I have a little over 1000. I have a very powerful computer with a solid state drive and lots of ram, so I can't imagine this is the issue.

[Alfred]

1 minute ago, dennisqdw said:

Re the fonts, I have a little over 1000.

That doesn’t sound as though it would place excessive demands on your system resources when launching the app.

[walt.farrell]

21 minutes ago, dennisqdw said:

So apparently uninstalling affinity (the msix) version is not so easy. There is no uninstall option anywhere

1. In the Start menu, right-click it and choose Uninstall. 

2. In Settings, Apps, choose Uninstall.

[dennisqdw]

Walt, thanx for the directions, but for many, including myself, that doesn't work. It's not listed in Apps.

I've tried a force uninstall on the exe file using Revo but although it looked like it was uninstalling something, it appears not to be Photo 😞

[dennisqdw]

Ok, an update. Although it went against my experience and judgment I thought what the hell, I'll just try to install the "exe" version and see what happens - it actually worked and photo now opens in seconds. But this is not the same "program" as the *.msix installed version (see below). And btw for anyone reading this thread about the fonts, the loading window does say "initializing" first (where it took so long) and then "loading fonts" which also with this version only took a second. So the font issue is not related to the initializing issue.

As some of you know the *.msix installer version puts the program files in an entirely location than the *.exe version. Although I imagine there still may be some stray registry lines for the former, I think I'll just delete the directory holding that version entirely. Ok now to do this for designer and publisher.

I have sent an email to the serif folks about this, don't know if I'll get a response or not.

--ds

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, dennisqdw said:

As some of you know the *.msix installer version puts the program files in an entirely location than the *.exe version.

Did you mean to write an entirely different location?

[dennisqdw]

Woops, sorry you are of course correct. Typing a little too fast there

 

[walt.farrell]

16 hours ago, dennisqdw said:

thanx for the directions, but for many, including myself, that doesn't work. It's not listed in Apps.

If the MSIX is installed, it should be listed in Settings, Apps. At least it is on both my Win 11 systems, and I don't recall anyone else saying they didn't have it.

[PaoloT]

In the Mac, rebooting the computer makes the Affinity apps start much faster. So, I guess it is some huge cache having to be checked at the app startup. Rebooting the Mac cleans all the caches.

Paolo