Bridge CS5 freezes

[gregkvaughn]

For the past few weeks, Bridge has repeatedly been freezing immediately after opening the program. The normal screen appears with either Favorites or Folders showing, but no thumbnails. In the lower left corner, only part of the little rotating circle shows that normally indicates Bridge is working, and it is frozen. Sometimes if I just let everything sit for 5-10 minutes, the thumbnails eventually appear, but if I click on another folder it freezes again.

I have repeated trashed the Preferences and rebooted the computer, but it coninues to happen. Any suggestions on what else I can try?

MacBookPro (early 2008, Core 2 Duo), OS Lion 10.7.2, Bridge 4.0.5.11

Thanks,

- Greg

[Guest]

Hi- Wanted to let you know. Both my wife and I are having the identical problem on two different Macs (iMac and Macbook Pro) running 10.7. I've always had problems with Bridge but now it won't work at all. John

[Guest]

How much free disk space do you have?  Should have at least 10% and 20% better.  So on a 500 gig drive you should have 50 to 100 gig free.

[gregkvaughn]

I have a little less than 20% free, on a 200 GB drive. At one time I had the drive nearly full and saw that computer processing speed dropped dramatically - especially Photoshop - so I try to keep enough free space.

After multiple freezes on start with Bridge today, and a couple times trashing the Prefs, I also opted for deleting the cache and that seems to be helping.

[Guest]

Do you have your cache on a seperate dirve or partition that may be getting full?  If you use 100% previews it can take a lot of space.

[gregkvaughn]

Thanks, Curt. I've always specified "Always Export Cache to folders when possible".

I don't partition my drives, and only current files are kept on the MBP's internal HD. I have thousands of photo files stored on an external drive (which is normally connected to the computer (vis USB) when I'm in the office.

Another problem that I've had with Bridge is that it seems to have to create previews in a folder, even if I've visited that folder recently. Perhaps my cache was just getting too large. I've now toggled off the setting for "Keep 100% previews in cache". I didn't think that I had it set that way before, but I just looked and that setting was checked (for save). Maybe this will take care of the problem.

[Guest]

Even if you export cache to folders you still have the central cache.  So now you really have two caches.  OK to purge the cache once in awhile (Tools/cache/purge cache for xxx folder)  as this will wipe both cache.

THe purge cache in preferences only purges the central cache.  Good to compact cache every so often as it will shrink size by deleting unneeded entires.

[gregkvaughn]

Thanks again, Curt. I thought the purpose of exporting the cache to folders was so that there was no single giant file that needed to be accessed and that thumbs/previews would be read faster.  Didn't know that there was still the central cache. I'l try compacting more often and purging every once in a while.

Since the last resetting of Preferences and purging the cache, Bridge has been working much better.