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Lightroom eats all PC performance - makes other programms freeze

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reach

Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2018
Messages
33
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
Classic CC 8.3.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Hi there,
I asked this question already here: Classic CC much slower than LR5.x ?
but the answers were not satisfying, especially not considering the magnitude of the problem:
when Lightroom is doing batch jobs (import, export) it eats up ALL performance. Just browsing a simple webpage next to it is almost impossible, watching locally stored videos via VLC: almost impossible.
RAM is fine, just all Cores are @100%.

Is this normal behavior? I'm a pretty experienced computer person and I have never had a software having so massive impact on other programs. Since multi-core technology started, even a software failure using 100% CPU isn't this bad any more. Not as bad as Lightroom(*).
AFAIK this kind of performance highchecking should be avoided on an OS-level.

I'm happy to answer all questions about my hardware, but since this happens on both my Desktop PC as well as on my Notebook, both with decent specs, both with sufficient RAM (which isn't closely fully utilized by LR) I don't think it matters. My question is more about this being a general LR issue. If so I should find thousands of complaints on Google, but I don't. All I find are general performance/speed complaints. This makes me rather confused.

Thx,
reach

*: sure it's a good thing when software is written close to the metal allowing it to perform to the max. But for obvious reasons I want to use my PC in multitasking mode and even the most power hungry application manage to leave space for other programs next to them.
 
My first suspect is RAM. How much do you actually have on each system. Also what is the image size of your raw files? That will also have a bearing on performance and system resource usage.

-louie
 
I'm glad to see that Hal is on the job today. I was about to suggest the very same. Lightroom will consume up to 6 cores if these are available to the app. 16GB of RAM is about the minimum for decent LR performance. Sufficient freespace for temporary files on the C:\ drive is a requirement for Windows to operate properly. I'd recommend a minimum of 100GB for smaller disks or 25% if the disk is larger than 500 GB.
 
Thank you Hal and Clee.
The same thing was suggested already in that older post of mine. The problems I have/had with that are 2 things:
1) it's not permanent. A script would be an option but
2) fiddeling with this on OS level has also another caveat not mentioned in the linked article: other programs would not only use the free core. They still "see" the fully utilized cores and try to use them, with the similar bad results as originally.

My main question remains: am I the only one with that problem, or am I the only one considering this a problem?

Clee's post about RAM made me curious about a related thing: I use to setup my PCs with zero virtual RAM (pagefile.sys). This has been recommended years ago since every PC had an abundance of RAM and limited-read/write-cycles SSDs. I use it since without any issues.
As I said, LR isn't even closely fully utilizing my RAM, but still this may be a unique configuration which could explain issues only I experince.
 
Clee's post about RAM made me curious about a related thing: I use to setup my PCs with zero virtual RAM (pagefile.sys). This has been recommended years ago since every PC had an abundance of RAM and limited-read/write-cycles SSDs. I use it since without any issues.
As I said, LR isn't even closely fully utilizing my RAM, but still this may be a unique configuration which could explain issues only I experince.

Please ignore this statement/question. Found that I haven't done this on my main PC.
 
but the answers were not satisfying, especially not considering the magnitude of the problem:
when Lightroom is doing batch jobs (import, export) it eats up ALL performance. Just browsing a simple webpage next to it is almost impossible, watching locally stored videos via VLC: almost impossible.

@reach,

I have read through this this topic again and also read your origional post from last year. It seems to me that what you are experiencing likely has to do with something like a windows setting, hardware problem or perhaps bug that is common to your two systems.

It is not normal that even when all cores are maxed out that your system should not be able to switch context to and run another application. It is, I think, less likely that there is something about Lightroom that is not letting go of resources than there is something about your environment that is not allowing other processors to gain a foothold.

I know that this is not very helpful but unfortunately this type of performance problem can be very hard to track down. The only thing that I can think of for now is, if you can is to do a completely clean from scratch install of Windows and Lightroom and see how that performs. Hopefully you have a spare disk lying around so that you wouldn't have to disrupt your running computers.

-louie

PS Windows registery comes to mind. Is that still around in W10? If so maybe try a registry cleaner....
 
@reach,
I know that this is not very helpful but unfortunately this type of performance problem can be very hard to track down. The only thing that I can think of for now is, if you can is to do a completely clean from scratch install of Windows and Lightroom and see how that performs. Hopefully you have a spare disk lying around so that you wouldn't have to disrupt your running computers.

-louie

PS Windows registery comes to mind. Is that still around in W10? If so maybe try a registry cleaner....

Well, first of all I wanted to understand if I even HAVE a problem, or if this is normal. But reading your answer I assume it's not.
From-scratch installation is a good idea. I have SSDs, RAMs etc. lying around en masse, I like to play with hardware - just usually not on my production system. But I'll try that on this same system and let you know.

Yes, Registry is still there and still a thing in W10. But Registry-Cleaners are evil stuff. Never seen them fix any problem, but seen them causing problems time and again.
 
I have now tested on my production hardware on a "from scratch" installation and the issue can be closed. Whatever it is, it doesn't happen on a fresh setup.
I have said that the same thing happens on my notebook, but I'm afraid that wasn't accurate. I think due to the fact that my notebook has only one screen and the desktop has two the usecases are quite different and so I believed it's the same issue but it is definitely not that LR freezes other applications on the notebook.
Thanks everybody for your help!
 
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