Hanging on a newly recorded project "Save as"

Found this on the MS site-

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918165

Worth a look in to anyways.

Especially the
" Some third-party applications stop responding when you open or save data in the “My Documents” folder. "
in the Symptoms list.... ;)

Well, it just finished saving as --- took it 35 minutes to save a 57 MB file. I was too quick in my previous post. I just also got a warning message from Windows XP that my system was low on virutal memory. Interesting.

Thanks for the suggestions Rick. I'm on C: drive already, and I just tried a short path --- C:\temp\filename.cp. Same results. What I had done was create a new blank file, import 37 slides from an existing file, then tried to save the now 38 slides. Saving an existing file after edits works fine. Seems to be just the Save As. Symptoms as Nick described above --- CPU pegged at 100%, but no I/O. No disk activity after the initial saving as the progress bar moves across then stops. No thrashing. Just hangs.

I'm searching for the solution to the same problem. And my file is "only" 42 slides with no audio or animation. A 40 GB hard drive with 27% free space. 1 GB RAM with a P4. Nick, did you ever get any help from Adobe?

Thanks.

?? ... OK ... ??

Ok, perhaps it's worth mentioning that although I'm new to captivate I'm not new to software development (I have a software engineering degree, 10+ years of commercial experience in this field).

Disks activity will only effect performance to store/retrieve data at a certain rate (partially important for motion capture as it can restrict the number of frames per second that can be captured).

I don't want to get into details, however it's a reasonable to assume that an application will refuse to perform an operation in the event there is not enough resources rather than corrupt - obviously indicating this to the user.

I, and any customer I've met, would regard corruption in such an important piece of functionality as a serious issue/flaw that would prevent purchase.

Would you purchase a car if the engine blew up each time you pressed the brakes?

Lynne, a few notes for clarification.
1) You treat my use of the term "thrashing" as though it were something I just made up. It is a common term descriptive of rapid and repeated accessing of the hard drive in its efforts to perform any disk-intensive task, specifically page swapping. The "rev up" term that you have chosen to use is called "thrashing" among all PC technicians. To quote Webopedia, one of the most respected online "technical dictionaries":

quote:

---

Disk Thrashing:

In systems that use virtual memory, the resulting condition of a hard drive being used excessively for virtual memory because the physical memory (i.e., RAM) is full. (The process of moving data into and out of virtual memory also is called swapping pages.) Disk thrashing considerably slows down the performance of a system because data has to be transferred back and forth from the hard drive to the physical memory.

A sure sign that your computer is thrashing is when an application stops responding but the disk drive light keeps blinking on and off. Thrashing is generally caused by too many processes competing for scarce memory resources. To temporarily stop thrashing, you need to terminate one or more applications. To stop it permanently, you need to install more main memory.

---

2) My reference to Production Studio's install size was simply to make the point that 10GB "free" space is really very little - less than is required to install a large program, and certainly not enough contiguous free space to facilitate page swapping as would be automatically invoked as a function of the OS if physical RAM were not sufficient for the computer's requirements.

3) Of course you are being argumentative, but not only do I not mind ... I encourage differing points of view if they are supported by logic and reason. That's how we all learn.

4) I am aware of Adobe's system requirements. I am also aware that there is a difference between resources required to run the application under optimum conditions (often the marketing departments' idea of a minimum), and those required to run the application comfortably in a day-after-day development environment. The answer to your question " Why would Adobe only recommend less that half of what (I) do?" is - well, no offense, but their goal is to sell software, while mine is to use it and advise on it. Adobe isn't lying to you (exactly) - but neither am I.

I will be greatly surprised if Adobe's "official" answer to Nick's problem is substantially different than my own ... but like all of you, I look forward to seeing their comments.
.

Hi Nick,
I would also be more than happy to hear any explanation Adobe has particularly as relates Larry's comments on the subject. My machine will "thrash" as Larry puts it while saving "large" files. Agreed - the definition of large is nebulous - is it the number of slides, the amount of objects, or the combination of objects? I have had simple text caption slides in a project corrupt, and also animations corrupt. Simulation recordings are not exempt either. I can't really say I've seen a pattern of "more objects" increasing possibility of corruption either. Not enough "experience" (thank goodness) with corrupt files to see that pattern. Although I do note that when I make a lot of edits after I've created the project, I seem to have more problems than if I can just make it up once and stay with it the first edit. But how often does that ever happen? I also found corrupt slides by trying to import them to other projects. If they don't import, import slowly, or the computer freezes, I then know what slide is corrupt (or the objects on it) and can go back and redo that slide.

The hard drive on my computer (Pent 4, 1G RAm 2.8 GHz Dell) does "rev up" during a large (60-100 slides) file size and keeps "rev ving" until the file gets through save. Nick, I have found if the save box is open for more than a minute or two while saving - it's gone corrupt. Mine does exactly what you described above with task manager, not responding, file corrupt. If I hear that "rev up", I will quickly shut down every other application I have open to try to save it - most times it works or helps. I suspected this in the very beginning of my problems and had 1G ram put in, but that did not "fix" my having corrupt files. Perhaps it isn't enough. Anybody think a dual core processor would help?

I did play with my page file, reducing it to 0 at one point - couldn't see any difference.

But Larry, not to be argumentative - Cap2's Datasheet only requires 256K Ram - 512 Recommended - if what you say is true "1G is not enough" - why would Adobe only recommend less than half of what you do? I have no idea what Production Studio has to do with running Cap2, but a stand alone Cap2 should perform if you meet requirements, let alone go twice the recommended RAM.
Datasheet:
http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/productinfo/systemreqs/

Nick, I look forward to Adobe's response.
Lynne

Sure. I want to give it some more time first.

Adobe have got in touch to help resolve the issue.