08-20-2021, 03:59 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-20-2021, 04:09 AM by LagrangeL4.)
(08-14-2021, 12:27 AM)Ofnuts Wrote:(08-13-2021, 11:47 PM)LagrangeL4 Wrote: Update: I left Gimp in a "not-responding" state after requesting "File-Open", came back a half-hour later, and the File-Open box was finally up! Just, it took about 2000 seconds to come up, which is 20,000 times longer than the 0.1 seconds (or so) it usually takes. But after that initial half-hour delay, all menu items work normally again for a half-hour or so. Then GIMP goes back into a "not-responding" state for another half-hour, then works normally for a half-hour again. Very weird. But at least I now have some things to try; thanks for the information.
This looks like the old "phantom diskette drive" problem. Usually when the file dialogs are very slow to open it is because Windows thinks a filesystem/drive is available when it it not. So, beside the phantom diskette drive (fixable with a change in the BIOS configuration) other potential culprits are network drives (including possibly cloud storage support).
Ah, yes, that seems very likely, because I'm always attaching and detaching removable drives (both for off-line storage and for backups), and I usually have one or two other partitions on other computers attached as "mapped network drives", and those can change during a session. So if GIMP requests "what drives are present" from Windows, and Windows replies with "no-longer-valid" info, then GIMP tries to access those drives, I can see how that could lead to freeze-ups. And it would explain why this problem went away the next day: I turned all my computers off for the night, and when I restarted them the next day, Windows was then presenting "fresh" data when GIMP asked "what drives are available?" when I click any of the items in the "File" menu.
Further update: A day later, the problem just "went away" by itself, before I had a chance to even try the things suggested by others. I think now that "Ofnuts" has it right when he suggested that this problem was due to a disconnected drive that Windows was reporting to GIMP that didn't actually exist. So I think the workaround is going to be, if I do any disconnection of drives (either USB SSDs, or mapped network "drives" which are actually HD partitions on other computers), I should probably restart my computer before launching GIMP, so that Windows is providing "up-to-date" information when I click any of the items in GIMP's "File" menu that attempt to bring up a file-browsing box listing available drives.
So I think we can safely mark this case as "Closed". My thanks to all who offered suggestions; you ended up pointing me in the right direction.