V1.3.13 stalls on W7 (32 bit) SP1

[iSNARK]

I too had upgraded to service pack 1 on Windows 7. I'm using 1.3.13 as well. Before the switch to SP1, I could do an echo effect on a 2-3 minute clip in about 20 seconds. Since the upgrade to SP1, that same echo effect takes about two minutes. It's also taken a lot longer for longer tracks to load, and it does freeze up (with a "not responding" status up top) for about a minute between the time the track loads and the time you finally get to work with it.

Will there be a version eventually that will support SP1, or am I better off dropping SP1 (if that's even possible)? Until SP1, Audacity was working nicely for a good five years for me (both the 1.2 and the 1.3 species) in XP and 7.

Thanks much.
BMP

[Gale Andrews]

I too had upgraded to service pack 1 on Windows 7. I'm using 1.3.13 as well. Before the switch to SP1, I could do an echo effect on a 2-3 minute clip in about 20 seconds. Since the upgrade to SP1, that same echo effect takes about two minutes. It's also taken a lot longer for longer tracks to load, and it does freeze up (with a "not responding" status up top) for about a minute between the time the track loads and the time you finally get to work with it.

Will there be a version eventually that will support SP1, or am I better off dropping SP1 (if that's even possible)? Until SP1, Audacity was working nicely for a good five years for me (both the 1.2 and the 1.3 species) in XP and 7.

First I have Win 7 32-bit SP1 on a laptop and I have not noticed any adverse effects. I had not seen any reports against Audacity prior to this one and the topic this was split from.

Audacity Beta already suffers from a hang drawing the waveform after importing a long file, after processing an effect on a long track or fitting long projects to the window, but it sounds as if everything Audacity does has slowed down.

You can speed up import of WAVs and AIFFs by choosing "Read uncompressed audio files directly" in the Import / Export Preferences.

All the above said, there are lots of internet reports about general system slowdowns after Windows 7 SP1. They could be due to changed drivers, or existing drivers or programs (such as firewalls and anti-virus scanners) not being compatible with SP1. There are even reports of a new mscorsvw.exe process in SP! causing hold-ups, but that should only be a temporary issue. Any system slowdowns may "look" like a problem in Audacity if Audacity is the only program where you are putting considerable demands on the processor. I suggest you read these search results for ideas.

As a first step I would try turning on Task Manager (you can find it from the Windows globe by typing "Task Manager" without quotes). At its simplest, look at the CPU usage icon in the system tray (by the clock). Is there a lot of CPU use even before Audacity starts? If not, does Audacity start using a lot of CPU before you even import a file or do anything else? Or only once a long waveform is present?

You can uninstall SP1 but it's something of a sledgehammer solution even if it is the cause. You would definitely want to see if any critical updates remained to be installed after uninstalling SP1.



Gale