Actinic Crashing and not responding

[ashsmith]

Hi,

I'm currently using Actinic V8.5 on Windows Vista (fully up-to-date) and I've always had issues with Actinic crashing and being extremely slow and unresponsive. I've searched the forums and can't find an answer.

Does (or did) anyone have the same problem as I do with actinic crashing and not responding when doing certain tasks? If so, how did you over come it?

Tasks I generally undertake -

• Editing the products, adding new products - I need to check the price in page preview so I can see the price inc VAT since actinic only supports two decimal places it can go either way which is annoying. Page preview causes Actinic to freeze
  
• Editing the more information page - when I click save... it freezes.
  
• Making modifications in Design View cause the program to freeze also

I use disk cleanup on a daily basis and restart the program regularly.

Any advice would be helpful. I may buy a computer and put XP on it to run Actinic if all else fails.

[Mike Hughes]

Things I would suggest:

1. Compact your database.
2. Use the caching tool to change the caching size.
3. Make sure you don't have an external objects enabled in preview. Things like add-this, google analytics, SSSl / Security logos, can all bring actinic to a standstill.

Mike

[guccij]

Which version of 8.5 do you have? Cos from memory, only 8.53 is compatible with Vista.

[Duncan Rounding]

Have you tried turning off UAC in Vista to see if it's permissions related?

[ashsmith]

@drounding UAC is off, dreadful thing to have turned on! Can't stand it

@guccij I have V8.5.1.0.0.0

@olderscot How do i do all 3 of those things? Actinic is still new to me

[Duncan Rounding]

First and most important step is to compact your database (you should do this daily). In Actinic go to Housekeeping - Compact Databases - select both and OK.

Your v851 release is compatible with Vista.

[guccij]

So you need to see if an upgrade to 8.5.3 helps perhaps?

While 8.5.0 was allegedly compatible, a number of changes were made in subsequent releases - see the change files at http://kb.actinic.com/activekb/quest...s+in+version+8

You can download 8.5.3 from this page

[ashsmith]

Thanks for the speedy responses guys!

I'll try compacting the databases, no improvement I'll try upgrading to the newer version

I installed XP on virtualbox to see for any improvements - I'll try the upgrade on there first.

With compacting the DB it's perfectly safe? No need to back it up first? I assume it is as its a tool within the program.

[guccij]

Please please do a full snapshot before upgrading, compacting or anything else!

[ashsmith]

Yeah sure, will do!

[ashsmith]

Upgrading is a no go

One of our sites, the one we aren't interested in moving of Actinic, breaks when I do the upgrade. It updates the pl scripts and they fail work thereafter

We bought these sites and have been in my hands to develop, but this issue of freezing hasn't been resolved by compacting the databases and the upgrade isn't supported on one our sites.

This one site we're having the problems with has been fiddled with vastly to get it to work the way it does - Not sure why thought.


Are there any other suggestions for improving actinic?

[guccij]

It updates the pl scripts and they fail work thereafter

Could you make a copy of the pre-upgrade .pl scripts and compare them using WinMerge to the upgraded ones, and make the changes accordingly?
Worth a shot, I'd have thought.
It sounds as if there are some custom layouts going on with what you've bought. Who was the original developer, do you know?

[ashsmith]

I'll try comparing see how far it takes me,

The people who designs the actinic plugins was a company called "Mole End" but a lot of the other changes we're made by the old owners who just put PHP in an around it I'm not aware of them personally changes the .pl files.