Beachball in AI CS4 (Mac bogging down on file save)

[christod]

I am having a recurrent problem saving files. The file saves as normal but then the Mac goes all beachball for 5 minutes before i can continue working in Illustrator. I can switch over to any other program and work, but AI is tied up with the beachball for minutes. I was having this problem a few weeks ago but it seemed to get better. Now it has returned worse than ever.

I am on Snow Leopard 10.6.8. We run Parallels 4 on this Mac Intel tower, which is about 3 years old.

I have run Onyx regularly for system maintenance. I am wondering if anyone could advise things I might try.

THANKS!

 

[Greg_Firestone]

Happen with all files or just a specific file?

Have you tried trashing your Illustrator prefs?

Also, how much memory do you have free? I'm just asking since you mentioned Parallels 4. Running at the same time?

Greg

 

[christod]

Hi Greg,

I have 12GB on the system. I have no idea how much would be "free". This is a pretty souped up Mac.

It occurs on some files only, especially those with linked images. (With no images files save no problem.)

 

[christod]

I did trash the preferences. No improvement. (Man, I HATE trashing the preferences...it is amazing all the work it is to get things back to scratch!)

 

[WI-Flexo]

My guess is that the placed images are huge and not sized to the art. We run into to this occasionally where a placed image will be a couple hundred MB and illustrator will dog when saving. Just a guess. But I really wanted to give you a tip on trashing prefs. Instead of deleting the folder, put it in another folder on your desktop and then delete the original. If trashing prefs does nothing then just drop you old prefs from your desktop back into the correct location.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Are there any other things than linked images that you can pinpoint? It could be the resampling for the included-PDF that takes time. Illustrator is bogged down with old code that badly needs to be rewritten as we come to expect snappy applications (remember the time we drew in outline and only turned on the preview when we were ready to confirm we had done the right edit). Are the placed images the same colour space, do embedded images give the same delay? Are the images rotated?

 

[christod]

Images are in the 40-50mb range, saved as psd. All are CMYK. PDF option in save dialog is 'off'. We select 'compression' as only save option. I am doing packaging work. The file began to give a problem in one of the flavours. I persevered through the delays. When it was done I saved as the file and then introduced elements for the next flavour. At that point the speed returned to a normal save. All very puzzling as the file has been built this way all along: resaving to create the next flavour. Somewhere along, it gets into this bogging down thing. Let me point out again: the save is complete almost immediately, only AI is beach-balling along for minutes before clearing itself (always eventually clears.)

 

[MacTwidget]

This has happened to me before. Try this.
Close all the CS4 apps. Then open Bridge CS4.
File > Open Recent > Clear Menu.

 

[curveto]

The file saves as normal but then the Mac goes all beachball for 5 minutes before i can continue working in Illustrator.

When you Quit Illustrator what is the size of the AI file (and it's linked files)?

The the folders in question (that contain the files) under inspection by Spotlight (i.e., Apple's local search), Time Machine, iCloud (sync) or similar? Is the storage for the folders/files local to the machine or remote?

When you say, "the images are 40-50MB" ...is that before or after compression? How many images (roughly) are there?

You may watch the Console (Applications/Utilities/Console) when Illustrator is blocked (i.e., beach ball) to see if any indications of why it's blocked are emitted there.

 

[christod]

Tried the Bridge idea. No improvement, though,

Spotlight is off. No iCloud or Time machine.

File storage is on a PC based server.

Crazy thing is I have 12 of these files, all virtually identical except for 1 image each. Most open and save normally, but 3 are this crazy slow. I have opened the most recent and it took all of 20 seconds. The one that has been really slow has yet to open with over 5 minutes wait. Finally open: took 7 minutes.

I have CS5 applications on this machine as well. Adobe has a utility that allows CS5 apps to update to the latest version. (We use CS4 due to its compatibility with ESKO Package Suite 7: CS5 is not an option.) Does anyone know how I might update my CS4 with the latest version?

Console showed the following as I launched CS4 AI:

Mar 14 2012 8:45:21 AM [0x0-0x281281].com.adobe.illustrator[35384] SystemFlippers: didn't consume all data for DLOG ID 10033 (pBase = 0xb9fd200, p = 0xb9fd220, pEnd = 0xb9fd4c6)
Mar 14 2012 8:45:31 AM Adobe Illustrator[35384] *** WARNING: -[NSObject(NSKeyValueCoding) takeValuesFromDictionary:] is deprecated. It will be removed in a future release and should no longer be used.
Mar 14 2012 8:47:18 AM System Preferences[35602] .scriptSuite warning for result type of command 'timedLoad' in suite 'SystemPreferences': the type NSNumber ('long') doesn't match the result Apple event code ('doub').

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

These images that are slow have they got other data from Esko? If the file is slow there is some re-coding happening. I would look at the structure (outlines) in the file… there is some difference and you either search till you find the pattern… or be ready to accept uncertainty. Is there conversion of colours, resizing that needs to be calculated on save, transparency, redundant or hidden graphics (including stray points) If you copy all essential information to a fresh document do you get the same effect? Have you cleaned unused swatches and symbols? If you copy all data to another file? Is there a font (corrupt or with complex outlines) that needs embedding? Are there any effects used? (look for solid "target"dots in the layers panel when the layers are expanded. If so click the solid dot till it has a circle round it and see what the "recipie" is in the appearance).

That gives you some more ideas… we are curious to know what you find… or if you do not see a pattern. I'd be happy to look at it but do understand that there may be restrictions on sharing the files.

 

[curveto]

File storage is on a PC based server.

Crazy thing is I have 12 of these files, all virtually identical except for 1 image each. Most open and save normally, but 3 are this crazy slow. I have opened the most recent and it took all of 20 seconds. The one that has been really slow has yet to open with over 5 minutes wait. Finally open: took 7 minutes.

More Qs...

Is the behavior consistent (i.e., slow file is always slow every time you open it) or does the behavior vary?
Can you check the Perf of the server WHILE the Mac is blocking?
If so, are the server's NIC, local IO (do please tell us that the server has local (or extremely fast) access to the file(s), btw) or CPU pegged?
How big are the files (pick one slow one and one fast one and post them here)?
What does the network linkage from the Mac to the Server look like? (a traceroute from the perspective of both systems would be helpful)
What do the NIC configurations on the Mac and Server look like? (looking for multiple NICs and, if so, conflicting access stacking or routes ... if you're following me)
When AI is blocking go jump out and run a processor usage check to see if it's busy (i.e., heavy CPU utilization) or waiting/blocked (0 or near 0 CPU utilization)

PS - That console dump didn't illuminate anything, btw.

 

[christod]

I think I have an explanation. I was leaving additional images in a hidden "Do Not Use" layer. When I delete these hidden images the file saves just fine.

Some how the images being hidden (i.e. the 'eyeball' icon in the layers palette set to 'hide'.) seems to send AI for a loop!

Thanks to all for your kind attention to my difficulties. It is truly appreciated!

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

WoodPoint thanks for reporting back, that is really useful to know… I'd ask you to file a bug report, so that it can be looked into in future versions. It's by reporting things like that that software can become better in future.