Publish Services Publish Services starts good, slows and finally PC hangs - how to analyze this

[Jetze Posthuma]

Lightroom Version Number

LR Classic 12.0.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

I use LR CC Classic, 12.0.1 CR 15.0 on a Intel Core i7 8700K, 32GB Int Mem, Graphics: AMD Radeon Pro WX3100. OS is Windows 10, latest updates installed. The software and the catalog are on C-drive (a 1 TB SSD). My pictures are on H-drive (an 8 TB internal drive). I have over 150.000 pictures in my catalog. I am busy publishing a small .jpg of the best 15.000 pic's to E-drive (another internal HDD.) All drives have over 30% space left.

What happens is when I press the publish button LR starts to prepare for export, which takes a while (less than one minute). When it starts exporting it manages over 30 files/minute, which after some (irregular) time slows down and finally the system comes to a halt. Sometimes even my mouse cursor cannot be moved.... TaskManager shows LR is not responding. At worst the only thing I can do is a hard system shutdown by pressing the power button for several seconds.

Trying to solve this situation I checked for virus: none found. I disabled all file indexing of Windows Search. I checked for out of date drivers and updated the drivers for AMD Radeon Pro WX3100. There seems to be no need for Defragmentation on any disk. I checked my disk health with CrystalDiskInfo. Initially it reported (during a slow period) ID 07 Seek Error Rate on my H-drive to be bad and advised the disk to be replaced. Later in lots of different tests in all kinds of performance situations it reported the H-drive as healthy. What I do notice in both TaskManger and Performance Manager is that the H-drive where my RAWS reside has a "100% active time" with low data throughput. I also noticed "Average Response Times" going up (from milliseconds when running fine) sometimes in the 0.1s range but often over seconds into (sometimes) 10s second range. Way to long. I have noticed as well that the very same files are approached by both the "System" and LightRoom at the he same time.

So where I am now is that I ordered a new HDD because of the initial bad health report on my H-drive. I'm however not sure anymore the initial analyses is correct. It might be LightRoom, it may be Windows, it may be a driver, it might be my HDD. How to proceed? It looks as if LightRoom clogges the filesystem of my H-drive. I almost think that it might be that processes dealing with one and the same file are hindering each other. How to find out?

I am very much looking forward to some logical approach collecting the data needed to nail the source of this problem.

Thanks in advance for any help and thinking along....

Kind regards Jetze

 

[clee01l]

One of the first areas that I would check is the available free space on C:\. Lightroom uses working storage to create several version of the intermediate files need to create the final published file. In stead of 15.000 files exported, first try progressively larger number of files. Start with 1000, then 2000, then 4000 and 8000 to see where the process fails. This should give you some idea on the limits of your system, If you have truly 300GB free on C:\ I would be surprised to see the system crawl to a stop.

Starting in Safe Mode might also help see where the clog is coming from.

 

[Jetze Posthuma]

Thank you Cletus,

I have 700GB free on my C-disk. I will test safe mode and report back.

Kind regards, Jetze

 

[Jetze Posthuma]

In Safe mode it was more or less the same performance wise. Task Manager does not show the diskdrives any longer. So I watched the Resource Monitor instead.

I did sometimes see the same long response times, often between 10 en 200 millisec's, sometimes up to 1000 millisec's (sometimes even over 10seconds!). I noticed a lot of entries for both the C-drive and the H-drive. The number of entries varies. Up to 50 for the C-drive en over 80 for the H-drive at max. Sometimes even more. I do not know whether this is normal. The entries reside sometimes quite long in the list, several minutes is no exception. The performance varies accordingly.
Overall the system seems more stable now. I have had no freezes during more than two hours now.

What might cause problems is when I use other applications. I was internetting a bit and than I could hear from de sounds of the HDD the process was slowing down. Lightroom started not responding. Things improved a bit though not completely when I left internet alone. Lightroom was "not responding" off and on. The H-drive was often 100% active. A bit more intense internetting made things slow down considerably. C-drive entries grew to way over 150 en H-drive entries disappeared. As if something blocked the C-disk. But I did not yet experience a crash/system halt. And a couple of minutes later things improved again. I cannot be sure it was my activity or something else causing the deterioration.

I'm still at a loss here as at least one of the system freezes was at night when I was not using the PC. So it cannot only be interference from other activities.

I hope this helps,

Kind regards, Jetze

 

[Paul_DS256]

H-drive where my RAWS reside has a "100% active time" with low data throughput.

FWIW this sounds similar to a problem I had on my dated 2014 Windows Dell Desktop when I upgraded from W7 to W10. The difference is that I had 0 I/O reported with 100% disk activity. This would freeze my PC for 3 or 4 minutes when it happened which was several times a day. I never did find an answer despite many recommendations from those 3rd party folks who monitor the MS Forums. I finally replaced the perfectly good disk with a newer one and that solved the problem.

 

[Jetze Posthuma]

FWIW this sounds similar to a problem I had on my dated 2014 Windows Dell Desktop when I upgraded from W7 to W10. The difference is that I had 0 I/O reported with 100% disk activity. This would freeze my PC for 3 or 4 minutes when it happened which was several times a day. I never did find an answer despite many recommendations from those 3rd party folks who monitor the MS Forums. I finally replaced the perfectly good disk with a newer one and that solved the problem.

Hi Paul, thanks for your reply! Most unsatisfactory such a replacement of a healthy disk without knowing what actually goes wrong. I have a new disk already at hand, so I'm tempted to put it in and see what happens. On the other hand I managed to get the job done yesterday evening and last night. Thanks tot Cletus' advice of using safe mode. So I'm tempted as well to return de disk unused.

 

[Jetze Posthuma]

Starting in Safe Mode might also help see where the clog is coming from.

Hi Cletus, thanks for this advice. I managed to get the job done. It was still sluggish but remained stable for many hours and finished the job in one session. No need to split it up in smaller parts. I've now a couple of options: 1) leave it at this and use safe mode whenever needed and subsequently return the new diskdrive, 2) use the new drive and see if it helps, 3) one by one activate software components and see when the instability returns.

I will sleep it over one night. But I think I will opt for plan 1) as it doesn't involve hours of work without any guarantee for success.....

Thanks a lot for helping me!

Kind regards Jetze.

 

[Jetze Posthuma]

Update... Today my PC frooze again. Eventviewer gave me error codes 129 and 153. Microsoft explains code 153 en gives additional information about the extra info EventViewer supplies. In my case: SCSISTAT appears to be 00 (which I interpret as OK), SRB_STATUS is 04 (which I interpret as ERROR) and the involved SCSICMD appears to be 88 (which I interpret as READ16, the error involves reading the disk).

All fine, except that I do not know whether this indicates hardware failure or software failure. And if so, what to do.

Anybody more knowingly than I am???

 

[Jetze Posthuma]

How it went on....

I yesterday replaced my HDD. Took me hours to copy 4,5TB of pictures from my backup drive onto the new drive.
Performance/stability wise everything looked good. Checking Event Viewer I got no new problems and the old ones are gone.
Just before I replaced the disk, Event Viewer recorded an event in which the HDD driver warned that the disk was going to die.....
Using Lightroom Publishing went all good for over one hour. So did making 1:1 previews creating a larger amount of pictures.

Case closed. Back to normal....

Regards Jetze