ibsteveog

I also found a solution - I nuked my (windows) user profile completely. Created a fresh one from scratch and PDN works fine. I re-enabled Java Update and it did not cause the problem, so whatever collection of settings I had in my old user profile that allowed the lock-up to happen seems to be fixed. I will, of course, keep testing, but just nuking a profile sure beats re-installing applications (or even the OS).

Well, I had some time today, so I have done some narrowing down of the problem. Using msconfig, I disabled all non-essential services and startup programs. After rebooting, PDN works. I did a thorough check by waiting at least 10 minutes, then making sure Outlook 2007 and Word 2007 and Pidgin and such were all running. PDN still worked I then re-enabled services and programs in small groups and rebooted and then did the same tests. In the end, I still haven't caused it to fail on reboot, but I stopped early because I found an event which definitely caused PDN to stop working: Sun's Java 1.6 updater! PDN was working 30 seconds before the updater popped up a message to say "Sun has released a Java updated.. yadda yadda" and did not work seconds later. I ignored the java update and rebooted to test this... and post-reboot, PDN worked immediately before the notification and did not work immediately after. I have no idea how the java updater that appeared in my system tray would be the problem. The associated service, jusched.exe was running the whole time. I compared services running when PDN worked vs when PDN failed and the only difference was the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) was running when PDN failed, but stopping the service did not cause PDN to start working again. So... any ideas on what the java system tray notification of updates could do to .NET or PDN? I'll continue trying startup services and applications tomorrow, I simply ran out of time today.

I've just tried Paint.NET again with the 3.31 version and it still doesn't work. I suspect that my multiple monitor setup on a plain (non-fancy) graphics card may be partly responsible, but then again, Paint.NET *used* to work and suddenly stopped without any hardware changes, so...

Nope, its not an option. Especially not to fix one program.

I've done that several times with no luck.

Nice, I wished ESC had worked for me. Even pressing it over and over, the dialog still was taking 10 minutes to draw itself (you'd see a 1 pixel outline of it, then a few more pixels, then an area or two might get shaded, etc).... And after it had drawn itself and accepted ESC, it would take another minute or two just to return to the normal Paint.NET window.

There was a followup (I think I posted it) where it happens without Word being opened. Outlook does it - any Office 2007 product seems to do it. Also, if my system has been on for more than an hour, it will do it, regardless of Office applications - possibly due to some other application... It'd be nice if there was a debug version or a way to trace Paint.NET to see where it's getting bogged down.

I have no font problems... still wishing someone could solve this...

Defrag made no difference. Disk Cleanup is done regularly, but still no difference. %TEMP% is clear No memory hogs running (no AV, no Symantec/McAfee/Norton stuff running). No viruses. Not sure what to do about fonts - I haven't installed any fonts on this system. How would I know of "bad" fonts?

So, despite a full reinstall of the .NET Framework 3.5, a full re-install of the Paint.NET 3.30, and running the PDNRepair.exe, I'm still stuck with a broken Paint.NET. Anyone got any other ideas?

I don't know what this is supposed to prove, but here's the requested info: So, Word 2007 and Paint.NET are both open, both with empty default document/image open, no work being done. WINWORD.EXE: 0% of Processor time; 7,352K Mem Usage; 16,644K VM Size, no changes in a 1 minute period PaintDotNet.exe: 0% of Processor time; 41,552K Mem Usage; 40,584K VM Size, no changes in a 1 minute period I then click the Paint.NET Open button from the toolbar and PaintDotNet then takes 50% of CPU (1 full core), no significant change in either mem usage or vm size (they stay with 500K of their starting values). The dialog pops up an outline with a list view of files pretty quickly (although the entire screen is blinking as it struggles to redraw itself) and seems to really get locked up when trying to switch to thumbnails in the dialog. Also, even once Paint.NET has managed to get the dialog drawn and available, it's incredibly slow to use. Dragging other app windows around (such as the task manager) its excruciatingly slow if they are moved over any part of the Paint.NET window.

More testing shows that when Paint.NET is mostly working right, the 5-10 second delay in the dialogs is the Paint.NET process using 100% of one core for that entire period. The other core is empty (and I still have 1.5 GB of memory free).

I did a little more testing. Word 2007 will cause the problem, but so will other things - I haven't figured out the exact trigger. When Paint.NET has the system locked up, task manager shows that one core of my cpu is 40% Paint.NET and 60% Explorer.exe, with the other core completely free. Also, it's definitely true that each time I try to the use the Open/Save As dialogs, the lockup lasts several times longer. Also, even when Paint.NET is working properly IMMEDIATELY after a reboot, the Open/Save As dialogs take 5-10 seconds each to open and close (even when just pressing Cancel to close!), which seems abnormally long.

When i first got this machine, it did, in fact, have a bad stick of RAM. We replaced it, and then did lots of testing of the system hardware to verify that all was well. Then we reinstalled the OS and it's worked perfect. The only thing that doesn't work now is Paint.NET =(

I don't have the time to do a full uninstall/reinstall of Office 2007 right now. It's a slow process and I have already spent a good deal of time just discovering that Office 2007 and Paint.NET don't play well together =\.