PDN very slow to start

[sashwilko]

Recently after the Windows 10  update (1607) OS Build 14393. 187. Paint.net (4.0.12) is taking a long time to allow me to either open an image / create new or just open a fresh 800x600 canvas. The below image with the "not responding" text in the upper right, is what I get for around Three to Five minutes.

 

Below is text copied from the diagnostics within pdn. Hope this can help solve the issue. Thanks
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Application    paint.net 4.0.12 (Final 4.12.6099.39434)
Build Date    12 September 2016
    
Hardware accelerated rendering (GPU)    True
Animations    True
DPI    96.00 (1.00x scale)
Language    en-GB
    
OS    Windows 10 (10.0.14393.0)
.NET Runtime    4.0.30319.42000
Physical Memory    8,114 MB
    
CPU    Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-5157U CPU @ 2.50GHz
    Architecture    x64 (64-bit)
    Process Mode    64-bit
    Speed    ~2494 MHz
    Cores / Threads    2 / 4
    Features    DEP, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4_1, SSE4_2, XSAVE
    
Video Card    Intel(R) Iris(TM) Graphics 6100
    Dedicated Video RAM    128 MB
    Dedicated System RAM    0 MB
    Shared System RAM    4,057 MB
    Vendor ID    0x8086
    Device ID    0x162B
    Subsystem ID    0x8093103C
    Revision    9
    LUID    0x0000C75B
    Flags    None
    Outputs    1
    
Video Card    Microsoft Basic Render Driver
    Dedicated Video RAM    0 MB
    Dedicated System RAM    0 MB
    Shared System RAM    4,057 MB
    Vendor ID    0x1414
    Device ID    0x008C
    Subsystem ID    0x00000000
    Revision    0
    LUID    0x0000CA13
    Flags    Software
    Outputs    0

Edited September 26, 2016 by sashwilko

[BoltBait]

Try this: reinstall paint.net

 

This will force Windows to recompile the application for your system.

[sashwilko]

10 minutes ago, BoltBait said:

Try this: reinstall paint.net

 

This will force Windows to recompile the application for your system.

Uninstal first or reinstall over current build ?  And would I need to remove all plugin's ?

Edited September 26, 2016 by sashwilko

[BoltBait]

It works out to be the same.  I recommend, just running the latest installer (download from here.) 

[sashwilko]

Opens OK for now, running the installer again, after a few hours of not opening pdn will be the test. 

[Ego Eram Reputo]

I have much the same issue because I have hundreds of plugins installed. If you have many, ruthlessly prune them!

[Rick Brewster]

What BB said  It sounds like the usual "jiggle the handle" troubleshooting stuff, but in this case it actually applies.

 

Technical explanation: OS upgrade causes the NGEN cache to be emptied. This contains .NET assemblies (DLLs) that have been precompiled so that they don't have to be JITted. Paint.NET leans on this heavily to improve its startup performance; on my system it's the difference between 10+ second startup time versus <1 second. Windows will automatically rebuild the NGEN cache ... eventually. There's also a command you can run to force this to happen (ngen /executeQueuedWorkItems, I think?). Reinstalling Paint.NET is probably the easiest way to get this done though.

[sashwilko]

Reinstalling has made some difference, now down to less than a minute before I can use pdn, a lot better than 3 - 5 minutes for sure. I will also have to follow the advice of EER and remove some of my lesser used plugin's. Perhaps storing the less used in another folder elsewhere and if needed copy / paste. Thanks all for the help and advice

[Rick Brewster]

A quick way to determine the maximum possible improvement: quit Paint.NET, rename Effects to Effects.bak, FileTypes to FileTypes.bak, and Shapes to Shapes.bak, and then start Paint.NET again. (or replace ".bak" with whatever you want) It will then start up with zero plugins.

[sashwilko]

5 minutes ago, Rick Brewster said:

A quick way to determine the maximum possible improvement: quit Paint.NET, rename Effects to Effects.bak, FileTypes to FileTypes.bak, and Shapes to Shapes.bak, and then start Paint.NET again. (or replace ".bak" with whatever you want) It will then start up with zero plugins.

I  know from first install with no plugin's installed pdn started up very fast when I first got my laptop, I will try your suggestion too and see what difference it makes. Thanks Rick

[wreckage]

I would just like to mention that I've been a 'victim' of very long opening times (yes, the three-to-five minutes as mentioned above), and because of this post I found that my Effects folder contained two .txt files and a .pdn.   When they were deleted opening times returned to normal.   I've been frustrated by that for months!    Glad to say it's now fixed.

 Looks like it's a no-no to have any foreign file-types in the Effects folder.

 

It would seem that I was incorrect in my above 'resolution'.  (I neglected to rename the Effects folder back after changing it).  However, when the Effects folder is renamed, Paint.net opens quickly and as expected so the problem does lie with one or more DLL files.
 I'm starting to trouble-shoot by renaming the oldest effects and seeing what happens.  So far I've renamed all DLLs older than 2014 and the program (right-clicking on a file and selecting Open With Paint.net) now opens in around 30 seconds.

 With the Effects folder renamed the program and image open almost instantly, so the issue is definitely caused by one-or-more Effects.

Hopefully, I'll have the time to narrow this down to the offending culprit.

My currently-installed Plugins are as follows:

sb-plugins

TechnoRobbo's

pyrochild

dpyplugins

BoltBait

shadow effect1_3.

and 'feather'

 I'll let you know if I find the culprit(s)

 

 

 

Edited March 19, 2017 by wreckage
Incorrect information

[wreckage]

OK... disregard the entire above post.

  I kept thinking that the issue was resolved but it is not.   Paint.net on my computer takes 5 minutes to open an image THE FIRST TIME it is executed.

If I wait the 5 minutes (during which time the computer is entirely unresponsive, although keystrokes are saved and executed after the 5 minute waiting period), then close Paint.net and then open the same, or a different image, it fires right up as it should.

  This issue is deeper than I initially thought and must relate more to other software/drivers on the computer than to Paint.net.   I'll have to trouble-shoot this another day because my brain can't wrap around the problem now.  Some weeks ago I entirely uninstalled Paint.net and removed its registry entries, re-booted and re-installed it only to suffer the identical issue.. Ho hum.  If anybody has any hints in the meantime, feel free to comment.

Cheers.

[Icewolf77]

Same poblem here. I recently reinstalled Windows 10 OS and since then the startup of the NEWLY installed Paint.net needs about 5 Minutes. Never had this issue before, even with 100s of plugins. Also tried to reinstall Paint.net, no difference.

[toe_head2001]

1 hour ago, welshblue said:

I've often wondered how many is too many plugins. 

Initial Start Up time for me is 1 - 2 minutes from a cold start - longer if I click back to a browser after starting PDN and then it goes unresponsive for a while.

But after that it's about 5 seconds.

It really depends on your hardware. 2 minutes is a very long time.

You should consider remove some plugins, or upgrade to a SSD.

 

I have over 450 plugins, and paint.net takes no more than 2 seconds to fully load. This with an older SATA connected SSD.

Imagine how much fast it would be with a newer one that uses NVMe. Or even one of those fancy Intel Optane PCIe SSDs!

[Rick Brewster]

On 11/17/2017 at 1:37 PM, toe_head2001 said:

Imagine how much fast it would be with a newer one that uses NVMe. Or even one of those fancy Intel Optane PCIe SSDs!

 

Not to rain on your parade, but it won't be much faster It's definitely CPU bound once you're using an SSD, whether it's SATA or NVMe.

 

I've actually struggled a bit to come up with some kind of whiz bang feature that would really benefit from an NVMe monster like the Intel 750 or Samsung 960 Pro. Almost everything I come up with is moot because having more regular RAM is a better solution.