IrfanView: sometimes very slow loading

"Mayayana" wrote:

As VanguardLH indicated, it's almost certainly
shutting off after a period of inactivity. When you
access it, it then has to start up again. That's
a good thing, unless you use that disk constantly.

I don't use external hard disks, but I do use
two internally and set them in the Power Options
to shut off after 20 minutes of inactivity. That
saves on wear and tear with the second disk,
which I often don't use as much.



Thanks, agreed. See also my other replies.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

In article , Terry Pinnell
wrote:

BTW, there seems no general consensus that sleeping is 'a good thing'.

yes there is.

Arguably it causes more wear than permanent spinning.

it *reduces* wear and tear unless it's constantly spinning up and down
all day long.

the general rule of thumb is if it's not going to be used for a few
hours, it should spin down.

On Mon, 07 Sep 2015 14:00:26 +0100, Terry Pinnell wrote:

[Delayed loading of *.jpg in IrfanView when /another/ HDD is in sleep mode]
After that, for subsequent JPGs, it's back to normal - until hours
later when it happens again. It's as if the WD unit goes to sleep and
IV has to wake it up for some reason - even though the JPG is not on
that drive.

IMHO, this behavior has nothing to do with IrfanView, itself. When
loading an image into IrfanView, the file cache of the OS gets involved.

If the OS considers this operation worthwhile a reorganization of the
current cache content (either because it has been the only significant
file operation, which has been occurring in a while, or because a large
portion of the cache gets involved), then it will validate its contents
to their equivalents on disk. Since not only files but also directory
structures are stored, such a checking/reorganization will trigger
access to /any/ HDD (sleeping or not).

You will probably not see similar behavior when starting a small text
file via double-click from Explorer. But starting huge text files most
likely will. As probably also will loading video files and the like...

To make things worse, any file operation will also trigger your A/V
program. As long as this one isn't satisfied with the whole content
of any file involved in the cache reorganization process (i.e. any
file currently in cache, the file you are up to load, the program,
that is called to load the file [= IrfanView], the current directory
with all its files for /any/ drive currently connected and maybe the
root directory of any drive connected, as well) it will prevent any
access to your *.jpg.

Reading all those files will take a while, especially, when drives have
to wake up. But you may also notice (somewhat shorter, but still) delays,
when you try to load huge files in IrfanView after the cache had most
recently been used by other programs for data, which +/- completely
filled - or worse - exceeded the amount of cache available.

You see similar unwanted behavior when you try to shut down Windows
with at least one drive sleeping. Although no file is considered
open on that drive and nothing needs to be written (provided, it is
not the drive containing the OS itself), Windows starts the shut-down
process by powering /up/ the sleeping drive(s)... :-(

F-Up2: acf

BeAr
--
================================================== =========================
= What do you mean with: "Perfection is always an illusion"? =
================================================== =============--(Oops!)===

On 08 Sep 2015, Terry Pinnell wrote in
alt.comp.freewa

Thanks, appreciate your thorough reply. Not sure all of it is
entirely relevant though. Buy as per my reply to Bill W, I think
you're right about the sleeping. However, as I said in that post,
why should it be accessed at all?

I see several options in Irfanview that might cause it to access
folders that it had previously been in. Things such as "Start in last
used folder".

Check through the program options and experiment turning some that
appear to be relevant off and on.

| I think you're right
| about the sleeping. However, as I said in that post, why should it be
| accessed at all?
|

The behavior can vary. If I open Explorer
on C it doesn't affect my other disk, but if I
open Power Archiver it will wake up. Presumably
PA is doing something to check all drives. Similarly,
if you're waking up the disk you *are* accessing
that may wake them all up.

Terry Pinnell wrote:

Buy as per my reply to Bill W, ...

Bill?

... I think you're right about the sleeping. However, as I said in
that post, why should it be accessed at all?

You mean why is it getting accessed all the time (and you don't think it
is going to sleep)? Or you mean why is it sleeping at all?

Does not look like you are continually accessing the external HDD. That
means it will eventually go to sleep either due to settings in your
power scheme configured in Windows or due to the HDD's own firmware code
making the device go to sleep. You can change the power options to not
have drives go to sleep but that will not affect the firmware code
inside the drive making it go to sleep.

Did you try the keep-alive utilities that I mentioned (after making sure
your power scheme does NOT spin down the drives after they have been
idle for awhile)?

BTW, there seems no general consensus that sleeping is 'a good thing'.

Some will argue that there is less wear on the spindle along with
reduced heat. However, the other side of the argument is that spin up
generates a surge current to all components and the motor has to begin
cranking at full torque for the heads to take flight.

I don't bother to put my computer to sleep. I used to enable the "Turn
off display" option at 1 or 2 hours but have long left it disabled. Way
too many times something hung but a blank screen makes it impossible to
see what was running (had windows) and if there was an error message.
Besides, I like using the text screen saver to use my monitor as a big
clock. Might as well as use it for something when the computer is idle.
The "put computer to sleep" is disabled only because if there is a
program that interferes with coming out of sleep than I'm screwed again
with no screen to what windows were open and possible an error message.
This is for my desktop where I couldn't give a gnat's fart about saving
a few pennies per month on the cost of extra electricity.

Because surge current and motor torque is far less an issue with HDDs
for maybe a decade, I don't worry about having it spin cycling (well, as
long as the cycle is an hour, or more). So in my power scheme under
"Hard Disk - Turn off disk after", I set it for 4 hours. Many times I
may leave the computer but then come back to it to do more stuff and I
don't want the disk having to spin up every time I come back to the
computer along with having to wait for the delay to spin up. I have
several scheduled tasks that run during the night so the disk does not
often spin down even then. Only when I'm off to work, on a trip, or
otherwise away from home for awhile do the disks manage to get a long
enough idle time to spin down.

Arguably it causes more wear than permanent spinning.

Hmm, I haven't seen any failure benchmarks for a l-o-n-g time to support
always spinning is worse or better than spin cycling but then I'm
talking about long spin cycles: hours, not minutes. I know a lot of
folks are used to powering down the computers when they leave work but
that's really the company worrying about the cost in extra electricity
while the employees are gone considering they often leave on a ton of
lights and the A/C may cut back but it's still on. It's really about
not leaving any Windows sessions open. Having a sneaksie require to
login is still a value security measure. That' why they push out domain
policies to enforce use of a screen saver with the password lock
enabled. So how employees are trained to handle their workstations
taints how users handle their home PCs. What's good for a company
doesn't necessarily apply to your personal use at home.

Some external drives make a feature of that.

That's typically for other reasons. Reduction of heat because a crappy
enclosure was used. They want their customers to awe in the tiny size
of a laptop drive sitting in a skin-tight case. They want it small for
portability and because that's want customers like. Enclosures lots of
case ventilation, heavy case metal (not plastic) to act as a heatsink,
aluminum instead of steel for the case material (aluminum transfers heat
faster), and even small fans to force air through the case don't need
HDDs that spin down. I can put a WD black drive in a good case and have
a backup job run for hours without the case becoming more than warm;
however, because I knew I was putting a higher RPM disk in the case and
that it would be constantly accessed meant getting a good case so the
desktop disk inside an enclosure wouldn't get hotter than it does when
sitting inside a desktop tower.

Another problem with USB-attached drives is that they are often
connected to computers with limited power. A desktop plugged into the
wall outlet (with or without a UPS) is not as limited as a notebook
running off a small battery and then having external devices suck their
power off that same battery. For example, you can get gas-powered lawn
mowers that are self-propelled but the battery-powered electric lawn
mowers are not self-propelled. The load for cranking the wheels would
so severely drain the battery that run time to cut the grass would be
way too short. Need to save power when running off a battery. Mobile
computers are only mobile when they are running off a battery but users
still want to connect their USB drives to it. Not everyone with a
laptop or notebook wants to tote around a spare charged battery.

The one I've just ordered (as a precaution), a Seagate Expansion 2 TB,
appears to be one such example. I also run my XP PC 24/7 except for
holidays, partly for that same reason but also to allow for extensive
nightly backups and defragging.

I leave my home desktop PC running all the time. No sleep mode for the
computer. I didn't buy the desktop so it could sleep. For me, the
extra pennies per month for electricity are not an issue. For my
notebook, I either shutdown (power off) which is most of the time or I
go into standby if I know that I'll be frequently accessing it many
times during the day; however, I don't connect anything to it, not even
USB-attached drives (that's for when it is home on the A/C adapter to
run a backup).

Excluding why companies want you to power down their workstations, your
own personal use should be your guide as to whether you want to power
cycling your computer or devices and whether you bother employing
low-power (standby) power modes. Just because they're available does
not mandate you must use them.

On 9/8/2015 11:02 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:

Buy as per my reply to Bill W, ...

Bill?

... I think you're right about the sleeping. However, as I said in
that post, why should it be accessed at all?

You mean why is it getting accessed all the time (and you don't think it
is going to sleep)? Or you mean why is it sleeping at all?

Does not look like you are continually accessing the external HDD. That
means it will eventually go to sleep either due to settings in your
power scheme configured in Windows or due to the HDD's own firmware code
making the device go to sleep. You can change the power options to not
have drives go to sleep but that will not affect the firmware code
inside the drive making it go to sleep.

Did you try the keep-alive utilities that I mentioned (after making sure
your power scheme does NOT spin down the drives after they have been
idle for awhile)?

BTW, there seems no general consensus that sleeping is 'a good thing'.

Some will argue that there is less wear on the spindle along with
reduced heat. However, the other side of the argument is that spin up
generates a surge current to all components and the motor has to begin
cranking at full torque for the heads to take flight.

I don't bother to put my computer to sleep. I used to enable the "Turn
off display" option at 1 or 2 hours but have long left it disabled. Way
too many times something hung but a blank screen makes it impossible to
see what was running (had windows) and if there was an error message.
Besides, I like using the text screen saver to use my monitor as a big
clock. Might as well as use it for something when the computer is idle.
The "put computer to sleep" is disabled only because if there is a
program that interferes with coming out of sleep than I'm screwed again
with no screen to what windows were open and possible an error message.
This is for my desktop where I couldn't give a gnat's fart about saving
a few pennies per month on the cost of extra electricity.

Because surge current and motor torque is far less an issue with HDDs
for maybe a decade, I don't worry about having it spin cycling (well, as
long as the cycle is an hour, or more). So in my power scheme under
"Hard Disk - Turn off disk after", I set it for 4 hours. Many times I
may leave the computer but then come back to it to do more stuff and I
don't want the disk having to spin up every time I come back to the
computer along with having to wait for the delay to spin up. I have
several scheduled tasks that run during the night so the disk does not
often spin down even then. Only when I'm off to work, on a trip, or
otherwise away from home for awhile do the disks manage to get a long
enough idle time to spin down.

Arguably it causes more wear than permanent spinning.

Hmm, I haven't seen any failure benchmarks for a l-o-n-g time to support
always spinning is worse or better than spin cycling but then I'm
talking about long spin cycles: hours, not minutes. I know a lot of
folks are used to powering down the computers when they leave work but
that's really the company worrying about the cost in extra electricity
while the employees are gone considering they often leave on a ton of
lights and the A/C may cut back but it's still on. It's really about
not leaving any Windows sessions open. Having a sneaksie require to
login is still a value security measure. That' why they push out domain
policies to enforce use of a screen saver with the password lock
enabled. So how employees are trained to handle their workstations
taints how users handle their home PCs. What's good for a company
doesn't necessarily apply to your personal use at home.

Some external drives make a feature of that.

That's typically for other reasons. Reduction of heat because a crappy
enclosure was used. They want their customers to awe in the tiny size
of a laptop drive sitting in a skin-tight case. They want it small for
portability and because that's want customers like. Enclosures lots of
case ventilation, heavy case metal (not plastic) to act as a heatsink,
aluminum instead of steel for the case material (aluminum transfers heat
faster), and even small fans to force air through the case don't need
HDDs that spin down. I can put a WD black drive in a good case and have
a backup job run for hours without the case becoming more than warm;
however, because I knew I was putting a higher RPM disk in the case and
that it would be constantly accessed meant getting a good case so the
desktop disk inside an enclosure wouldn't get hotter than it does when
sitting inside a desktop tower.

Another problem with USB-attached drives is that they are often
connected to computers with limited power. A desktop plugged into the
wall outlet (with or without a UPS) is not as limited as a notebook
running off a small battery and then having external devices suck their
power off that same battery. For example, you can get gas-powered lawn
mowers that are self-propelled but the battery-powered electric lawn
mowers are not self-propelled. The load for cranking the wheels would
so severely drain the battery that run time to cut the grass would be
way too short. Need to save power when running off a battery. Mobile
computers are only mobile when they are running off a battery but users
still want to connect their USB drives to it. Not everyone with a
laptop or notebook wants to tote around a spare charged battery.

The one I've just ordered (as a precaution), a Seagate Expansion 2 TB,
appears to be one such example. I also run my XP PC 24/7 except for
holidays, partly for that same reason but also to allow for extensive
nightly backups and defragging.

I leave my home desktop PC running all the time. No sleep mode for the
computer. I didn't buy the desktop so it could sleep. For me, the
extra pennies per month for electricity are not an issue.

I have three computers here doing different things.
But the number of active computer hours per day is around 7
instead of 72. I figure that sleeping them saves me about $343
per year in electricity. Yes, in deep winter, the heat offsets the gas
furnace
and in deep summer, it costs 30% more for the air conditioner to
carry it away, but the saving is still significant.

Stated another way, I use about 16 kWh/day. Not sleeping
the computers would add about 50% to that.

Depending on how you value your time, there's another more significant
benefit.
If your computer is asleep, people who feel compelled to tell you about
everything that
happened them in the last 15 minutes have to waste someone else's time.


For my
notebook, I either shutdown (power off) which is most of the time or I
go into standby if I know that I'll be frequently accessing it many
times during the day; however, I don't connect anything to it, not even
USB-attached drives (that's for when it is home on the A/C adapter to
run a backup).

Excluding why companies want you to power down their workstations, your
own personal use should be your guide as to whether you want to power
cycling your computer or devices and whether you bother employing
low-power (standby) power modes. Just because they're available does
not mandate you must use them.

nospam wrote:

In article , Terry Pinnell
wrote:

I'm almost sure it's something to do with its firmware putting it to
sleep. (Or software. I recall I could not avoid it installing some
unwanted stuff. This was a few years ago so I'm vague.)

your observation is correct. it's spinning down when idle.

Why does the WD drive get into the equation at all? As you've reminded
some other posters (who seem to have missed that crucial point), the
JPGs are not on this drive.

where the jpeg is makes no difference.

the app could be enumerating all drives because it doesn't know which
photos you will be viewing or working with. it may also be a limitation
of windows where any drive access causes all drives to spin up.

Are you an actual user of the latest version of IrfanView (the 'app'
under discussion)? I don't believe it "...doesn't know which
photos you will be viewing...". It's the one I've d-clicked. As for
"...or working with" I'm not sure what you mean? Like any program,
IrfanView certainly can't predict what I'm going to do next.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

On 09/09/2015 08:44, Terry Pinnell wrote:
[]
Are you an actual user of the latest version of IrfanView (the 'app'
under discussion)? I don't believe it "...doesn't know which
photos you will be viewing...". It's the one I've d-clicked. As for
"...or working with" I'm not sure what you mean? Like any program,
IrfanView certainly can't predict what I'm going to do next.

Terry,

If you take a look at the settings for IrfanView - they are in the file:

i_view32.ini

you'll see several saved paths and several saved file names. At least
some of these may be scanned when the program starts.

--
Cheers,
David
Web: http://www.satsignal.eu

Bill W wrote:

On Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:29:20 +0100, Terry Pinnell
wrote:

Bill W wrote:

On Mon, 07 Sep 2015 14:00:26 +0100, Terry Pinnell
wrote:

This occurs usually at the start of a session or after a long gap. I
double-click a JPG in Explorer and instead of loading with the usual
speed that's one of IrfanView's impressive features, it takes 10-15
secs. During this time the LED flashes on one of my external WD hard
drives.

After that, for subsequent JPGs, it's back to normal - until hours
later when it happens again. It's as if the WD unit goes to sleep and
IV has to wake it up for some reason - even though the JPG is not on
that drive.

I'm using the latest version, 4.4.0 (32 bit) on an XP PC.

Anyone seen anything similar or have any insight into the likely cause
- and a suggested possible fix please?

You're likely catching your computer when it's doing something else,
and you had to wait for it to finish. That external drive was probably
active before you clicked on the photo - just a coincidence.

File indexing was always one of the big culprits with XP, but there's
many other thing it could be doing.

Thanks, but I don't really follow that. When the WD 2TB drive is
active, its LED always flashes. The occasional very slow opening of a
double-clicked JPG in IrfanView arises when the drive is not already
flashing, i.e. not already active.

I'm almost sure it's something to do with its firmware putting it to
sleep. (Or software. I recall I could not avoid it installing some
unwanted stuff. This was a few years ago so I'm vague.)

The fact that this long delay only arises hours after the last JPG
opening reinforces my opinion about the sleeping.

When I open a JPG the WD flashes:

1. For 10-15 s (only after a long gap), before IV displays the JPG.

2. For 1 s or less, if another JPG is opened shortly after the above
first attempt eventually succeeds.

3. Not at all. This is the state for a long period after the above.
JPGs open immediately, with no apparent involvement of the WD HD.
Which is what I would *always* expect.

Why does the WD drive get into the equation at all? As you've reminded
some other posters (who seem to have missed that crucial point), the
JPGs are not on this drive.

Disconnect it, and see what happens. What do you use it for? It's
possible that IV is using it for something. And is this the only
program that this sort of thing happens with? I have 3 external drives
on one PC, and none of them wake up, or do anything, when I open any
files of any sort, unless the files are on that drive, of course.

Do you use backup software that is set to back up continuously, in
real time as files change? If so, that might be the issue. After long
inactivity on the PC, try opening any file with another app (not on
that drive), and see if that drive acts the same way, whether it
causes a delay or not.

And I assume that there are file preferences in IV. Maybe you set
something to use that drive. In fact, if you've disconnected and
reconnected any drives, the drive letters might have changed, but I'd
think you would have seen other problems related to that. (Drive
letters could also change just from rebooting the PC, under some
conditions.)

Anyway, disconnect the drive, and then try to duplicate the problem.
You might get an error message from some app that will lead you to the
problem.

Finally, as others have said, it's time to move on from XP, and that
PC that uses it. I'm not saying it has anything to do with your
problem, but you are going to end up with more and more issues as time
passes.


Thanks for the follow-up. I will try the disconnection suggestion. But
the inconsistency of the behaviour is making isolation elusive. For
example, I sat down at the PC a few minutes ago for the first time
today . The LED of the 1 TB, 3.5", WD HD was steady, and had
presumably been so for many hours. Stop watch in hand, I d-clicked an
arbitrary JPG on C:, expecting to record 10-15 s before IV displayed
it. It took maybe 1-2 s to start flashing and the image came up after
a total of 4 s. Not 'normal', but much faster than the 10-15 s that
prompted my post. Subsequent JPGs (and BMPs, also IV-associated) came
up at normal high speed.

BTW, the 2 TB, 3.5" WD unit standing next to the 1 TB showed no change
in its light indicator, as usual. Both are on the same 8-port US bus.

Re your backup suggestion: I use SecondCopy for many scheduled
backups, including to K: (the drive under discussion). But no
real-time stuff, and of course there is no imminent b/u to K: at the
time I open the JPG.

I also use PerfectDisk for intelligent de-fragging, but there too I
see no likely issue.

I had checked IV Preferences for possible culprits. Prompted by your
post I just stepped through them again, but can't see any clear
suspects. These two looked possibilities at first sight

- Show "Recent files" in File menu (max. 15 most recently used files)
- Show "Recent folders" in Open/Save dialog (max. 20 most recently
used folders)

but *at present* K: appears in neither of their lists. Of course,
maybe they *did* at the time of the 10-15 s behaviour...

I've been putting off the daunting task of upgrading OS and PC for at
least 3 years. I have a very heavily customised system, riddled with
tweaks and macros (Macro Express Pro). With occasional exceptions this
PC (MESH 'Xtreme', 2008, Quad Core 2.66 GHz, 4 GB, 512 MB nVIDIA
GeoForce 8800GT) is running sweetly. And performance is still
acceptable, even for my video and DVD-making. Maybe when I see
resounding praise for Win 10...

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK