Windows XP help (CPU 100% hangup)

[Brad Lyon]

I recently upgraded to Windows XP Pro. My processor is an AMD Athlon 958MHz with 768MB of RAM. This upgrade was onto a new, out of the box, Western Digital 40GB hard drive not simply over top of an existing Windows platform or formatted hard drive. Every thing seemed to work fine for a while and then I started having the following problem.

I have a second hard drive labeled “D” in which I have all of my digital photographs stored. When I go into Windows Explorer to view the JPG files that are on my computer it will basically lock up for up to 20 minutes. What is happening is when I first open up a folder that contains the photographs the icons that are shown in front of the file information is a blue outlined box with what looks like a blue circle and a red arrow inside of it.

Then one by one the icons will change to what appears to be a icon that is associated with Adobe PhotoShop 7. Depending upon the amount of files and the size of files that are in a given folder this process has taken up to 20 minutes to complete. While this change is taking place if I press control, alt, delete to bring up the Windows Task Manager then go to the Performance tab the CPU Usage will be at 100%. Once all of the icons have changed to the Adobe style icon the CPU Usage drops down to 0% to 2% and then everything works fine. If I view another folder or exit Windows Explorer and go back to the folder that contains my photographs the process starts all over again.

Here are a few other things on the performance page of the task manager:

Total Physical Memory 785884K
Available Physical Memory 634572K
Physical Memory System Cache 263424K
PF Usage 90MB to 125MB
Handles 4598
Threads 314
Processes 23

This problem is compounded ten times when I try to burn the files to a CD using Nero. First it will take forever to list the files in the right pane in Nero and then when I select the files to be burned the hang up process starts all over again.

Any suggestions to a solution will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Brad

[Fish boy]

Brad,
I am just taking a shot here, but you mentioned that your picture files are associated with Adobe photoshop 7. My assumption is that this is your default viewer. As such, perhaps your computer is getting weighed down associating files through this program.

You might want to try making a different photo program your default that does not demand as many resources as Photoshop.

To change the default viewer, Click
1) start;
2) my documents (or someplace with a .jpg file);

Once Explorer is done messing around with the problem you described, then:
3) right click one of the photo files;
4) and left click properties. On the "general" tab, click "change". CLick a different program you want to use to associate this type of file (might want to do the same thing for .bmp files if you have a lot of them).

This change will effect all files with the same file extension. I use "Windows picture and fax viewer" and have had no problem. I can still open file I want to edit with photoshop.

If this does not work, you can follow the same steps to change it back to Photoshop as your default viewer.

Again, I have not experienced this problem myself, however, it is concievable that if Explorer is trying to associate all the pics through photoshop, this may have caused your delay.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

Fish

[MOP]

Try searching the site below, in fact maybe you want to get the news letter. I have used it for many years, lots of very good info well worth your time.

http://www.langa.com/

[Brad Lyon]

Thanks Fishboy! YOU DA MAN! :D :D :D

I knew it was going to be something very stupid. I went into Windows Explorer then left clicked on a JPG file then right clicked to go to properties and there was a tab "Photoshop Image" with a check box "Generate Thumbnails". I unchecked the box and now it seems to be working fine. This does not make sense since in all actuality it was not generating any visable thumbnails! I also went into Nero and that seems to be working fine as well.

Now for the real test, shut down and reboot and see if my problem is still gone.

Thanks Again,

Brad

[ToonaFish]

...and we never hear from him again as his computer erupts into a ball of fire... :D

Let us know!

[Brad Lyon]

Toona, you crack me up. I don't think I have ever read a post of yours that has not at least brought a smile to my face! You have a special gift!

I rebooted and guess what! Everything seems to be working okay! :D :D :D

The only differance I can notice is on my desktop I had about 30 icons for pictures that I have been working on and now instead of thumbnails they are just icons, big deal. I lost a great deal of sleep last night over this one.

I posted the same request for help on the www.Donzi.net (http://www.Donzi.net) site, www.techtv.com/callforhelp (http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp) site and on the www.DPReview.com (http://www.DPReview.com) site(this is really cool site for photographers) and wouldn't you know it the Donzi guy's come through over all of the digital geeks!

Thanks again,

Brad

[Fish boy]

Glad I could help Brad. It was a shot in the dark, but I guess I would rather be lucky than good.

As for the Toona comment, I noticed the same thing about her posts. She sure is a sweetie and a welcome ray of sunshine to the boards.

Fish

[Fish boy]

MOP,
Thanks for the link. There is a lot of really great info at Langa.com.

Fish

[Ranman]

Brad, I'm not exactly sure how the thumbnails thing works, but I hav that issue on a smaller scale to some degree. When I view a folder that is marked to show thumbnails, it takes a bit longer to open the folder.

If i remember right, you like photography and hav like a 5 Megapixel camera. When you click the folder, windows will open the entire 5 megapixel photo "in the background" so to speak, in order to create the thumbnail. In essence, when you try to open that folder with thumbnails enabled, it would be like opening every 5 Megapixel photo in that folder at once. There's where your processing power is going. Disable the thumbnails and you disable the problem.

[Brad Lyon]

Randy,

I have since replaced that camera with another that each picture file is an average of 10MB to 18MB in size. So with a folder with almost 700 photographs in it you can understand why it took so long to load. The thing that I do not understand is it did not generate the thumbnails although the check box was checked. Oh well everything is working as it should and that is all that matters, and no flames! :D :D

Brad

[Ranman]

Yeah, I don't know why you would not get the thumbnails with the option checked. My guess would be that either you are exceeding some sort of limit or memory by working with such a high number of large files or maybe you would have to wait another 20 minutes lol.