50MB tiff files and memory hell in Windows XP.

March 9, 2005 7:13 PM

I've been working with 16-bit grey layered tiffs lately, 50-250 MB each. When browsing a folder of 25 files, my machine chokes to the point of screen redraws becoming "wipes". What'd going on, and how do I fix it?

PIII 1Ghz, XPSP1, 500MB ram, primary page file on boot drive 750MB-1500MB, secondary page file 750-1500MB on another drive, which does not hold any of these files. Spybot S&D installed and resident. AVG installed and updated. They report no trouble. Files are 16-bit tiffs, associated with photoshop. I have all system animation turned off, folders set to classic view, indexing disabled. When I have 20+ files in detail view, it chokes. I tried to workaround by storing the files in subfolders, 4 to a folder. This works fairly well, but if I need to quickly flip in and out of folders I have to let it breath, or I experience the same problems. The only applications using more than 1MB ram as listed in the task manager are Firefox(30MB) and javaw(->Azureus java BT client)85MB. When I close this folder, the trouble ends very quickly.

posted by Jack Karaoke to computers & internet (9 comments total)

If I understand correctly, this problem comes up when you're using Windows Explorer? Open the Task Manager and keep it on top as you browse the folders, and see what process is suddenly using all your processor cycles. If it's anything but explorer.exe, ignore the rest of this paragraph. One possible way to solve this problem might be using something other than Windows Explorer to browse the files. I like Servant Salamander 1.52, personally, but there are a million of 'em.
posted by box at 8:02 PM on March 9, 2005

What's happening is your system is scanning each of those huge files to build a preview image, which is taking a lot of memory and cycles. To check that this is the case, leave the folder open for a few minutes and go do something else. If you come back in 10 minutes, and the system is still dragging, it's something else. I recommend a RAM upgrade to at least 1 GB. Also consider setting Photoshop to save all files with large previews and thumbnails.
posted by squirrel at 9:19 PM on March 9, 2005

There are ways to turn off the image previewing function in the registry. Here's something I googled (but have not verified in any way) that looks like it would do the trick. As usual - use at your own risk.
posted by kickingtheground at 9:49 PM on March 9, 2005

Oh my.

I used the XP tweak kickingtheground linked, and uh.. it's really really fast.

So now I just made two little batch files to (un)do it for me. If someone feels like chiming in on how to not even have to click "ok" in the windows dialog box that pops up after I run the command, it would be icing on the cake.

Does everyone know about this or what? I would have done this years ago.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 11:49 PM on March 9, 2005

Wow, thanks for asking this question. Windows Explorer had been handling a little clunky for me lately, and now I know why. This fix is a godsend, and damn MS for ever implementing this "feature."
posted by mek at 2:27 AM on March 10, 2005

Don't you just love it when you find something that has been there all along and that would have saved you hours and hours of time and trouble if you had learned of it earlier? It's a wonderful combination of gratitude and regret. Good luck!
posted by squirrel at 2:33 AM on March 10, 2005

I was researching a way to do this in the registry, but if you insist on registering/deregistering dlls, add a /s to those commands (for example, regsvr32 /u /s shimgvw.dll) and those dialog boxes will go away.
posted by splice at 9:32 AM on March 10, 2005

And in case you're interested in the registry commands for this:

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /v ClassicViewState /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f disables thumbnail preview

reg add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced /v ClassicViewState /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f enables it again
posted by splice at 9:40 AM on March 10, 2005

Unfreaking believeable kickingtheground. Thanks
posted by Mitheral at 10:15 AM on March 10, 2005