Slow performance while launching inDesign 2021 and other Adobe apps on Windows 10

[Klаus]

Hi there!

My latest InDesign version (16.1 x64) under Win10/64 takes very long to start-up, like about 3 minutes, before I could even to a STRG-N or something.

This is also true with my latest Photoshop as well as Illustrator, so I’d guess it’s not just the apps’ fault only.

What can I do to improve this situation?

Thanks a lot!

{Renamed by MOD}

[Srishti Bali]

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about this trouble. Could you please confirm when did this start happening? Are there any recent changes made to your system? For example, any antivirus, system updates or web extensions installed recently. 

Try booting the system into Safe Mode ( https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/12376/windows-10-start-your-pc-in-safe-mode ) and check how it works there. It starts your system so that it performs certain checks and prevents third party software/ services from automatically loading or opening. If it works fine in Safe mode, then there is some third party service or application like antivirus, plugins or web extensions which are conflicting with the InDesign.

Regards,

Srishti

[Klаus]

Thanks, Srishti,

that seems to lead to some improvement ...

Before Safe-Mode Start: 3:10 minutes

After Safe-Mode Start: 1:40 minutes

This issue did worsen gradually following the last two or so app updates, I’d say.

[Dov Isaacs]

Some considerations here:

(1)  For the first time after updating to a new version of these applications, they create new sets of preferences and configurations, possibly converting them from earlier versions of the same applications.

(2)  Check how many fonts you have installed on your system. Part of Adobe application initialization is spent enumerating all the fonts you have installed on your system. If you make changes (adding, deleting, replacing) to the fonts, these applications do a full font enumeration which could account for an awful lot of disk and CPU activity before the applications are ready to use.

(3)  In conjunction with (2), if your computer is still using a conventional magnetic rotating disk drive, most seriously consider updating it to an SSD (solid state disk). These days, that is probably the most dramatic and cost effective way to boost your computer's performance (including application start-up time and font enumeration). And if you do still have an old, antique spinning disk drive, make sure you defragment early and often. (Note that SSDs don't require any defragmentation since there is no mechanical overhead to access non-adjacent disk sectors!)

[Eugene Tyson]

Where SSDs do increase boot time - I never knew it would have increased speed for applications, that is news to me.

I have an SSD and an i7 7700HQ and InDesign takes an absolute age to start up - I don't have a lot of fonts, only enable fonts on Adobe Fonts from time to time. 

My hard drive isn't particularly full and it defragments often.

[frazzlesnap]

I have a Samsung 970 Pro 1 TB ssd and an i7 9700k, and it takes InDesign and Illustrator over 10 minutes to load in Windows 10 or 11. Photoshop takes a few seconds. This problem has been going on for the entire 3+ years I've used this system. Trashing Preferences, reinstalling, disabling or removing fonts... nothing helps. It takes as long with 100 fonts as it does with 9000. I built another system at the same time, using the same model ssd but a Threadripper 2950x, and it loads InDesign and Illustrator within a few seconds. I know it can't be the hardware. an i7 9700k is a pretty decent cpu. My only clue is that, after a major system update, InDesign and Illustrator will load very quickly, but only until the system is rebooted. After that, it's back to 10 minutes or so waiting. They also randomly freeze for a minute or two every now and then. It's driving me crazy. I haven't found any help at all.

[BobLevine]

Have you tried a new user account?

[frazzlesnap]

Hi BobLevine,

Yes, I have tried several different user accounts, as well as the Administrator account. I have tried Safe Mode as well. I am currently at a loss. I even reinstalled Windows on a fresh ssd. Only after a major system update do InDesign and Illustrator start quickly and keep reliably responding, until the next boot. I tried to get help from some Microsoft forums, but all they told me was that it was either an issue unique to certain installations of Adobe products, or some sort of file system corruption, the latter issue has been ruled out.

Thank you so much for your quick response! It means a lot.

[BobLevine]

A few shots in the dark:


1. Are you using a 3rd party anti-virus? If so, disable it.
2. Are you using any 3rd party InDesign plugins such as a font manager with auto activation? Again, if so, disable it.
3. Totally out there, are you using the Bing slideshow wallpaper? If so, kill it and just use a static wallpaper.

[frazzlesnap]

Hi BobLevine,

I'm not using a 3rd party AV. I checked for any 3rd party InDesign plugins, and there weren't any installed. I never used the Bing slideshow wallpaper, mostly because I had read that it could lead to performance issues with quite a few programs.

Thanks again for your reply and assistance!

[frazzlesnap]

I had to reinstall the dvd burner because Windows 11 couldn't load the driver. I had to edit the registry a bit, and so far things seem to have sped up. The last three times loading InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop together, it has taken about 10 seconds. I am cautiously optimistic about this continuing, but I had the loading time problem even when the drive worked fine in Windows 10. In unrelated news, I need to find an easy way to uninstall all my Type 1 fonts...

[frazzlesnap]

It's back to its old tricks. 5-10 minutes to open InDesign and Illustrator. 3 seconds for Photoshop. While InDesign and/or Illustrator are opening, Acrobat becomes unresponsive (not responding). Once both InDesign and Illustrator are open, Acrobat works fine. It initially takes less than a second to load Acrobat...

[Klаus]

Thanks for your input, Dov!

As fonts are concerned – yes, plenty of them here. So, using my font manager (»MainType«) I just tried to reduce the number of »activated« ones to a minimum, which left some 130 of them still active for some reason. Anyway, shutting down InDesign and then restarting it prompts me with start-up time of about 10 seconds. Wow ...

Apart from this improvement, InDesigns kind of »first start-up of the day« nevertheless tends to take those enormous 3+ minutes again – this is after the computer has been newly started. Shutting InDesign down and then restarting it results in those nice 10 seconds once again.

This »mixed« behaviour is nearly the same with Illustrator, but far less (if at all) with Photoshop. The latter keeps starting up very slow, no matter what.

Besides: I’d say that the pure amount of fonts on my computer hasn’t lately been changed inasmuch as to possibly suggest that it must be the one and only cause for this issue. It rather seems to me that the mentioned Adobe apps have become more and more sensitive in connection with large local font libraries somehow.

Thanks –

Klaus