No more memory and Framemaker stops

[lsk2002]

That is proabably not a great title...

Anyway,

Ever since I have gotten my 64 bit computer, FM has been awful. I have FM10, Windows 7, 16GB RAM.

When I make a pdf, it, of course as usual takes forever. But now it stops responding and never refreshes. I get an out of memory message sometimes, but I alwasy have to shut it down. Then to open my book, I have to reset every file in the book to use it and update...ect....

Is there something I can do?

It is only using 3.5 GB memory to make the file, so my computer isn't running out of memory.

Thanks,

ls

[Arnis_Gubins]

Is your FM10 patched to the 10.0.2 version?

Is the AdobePDF your default printer instance when using FM (i.e. do use the SetPrint utility)?

Is your AdobePDF printer instance configured to spool documents and start printing immediately?

Do you have the printing preferences Output set to prompt for the fllename or is it pointing to a specific folder? [With the prompt, it may pop-up behind a window and wait (forever) for input.]

Do you have sufficient space in your system TEMP location?

Have you tried printing directly to a .ps file? Does this run into the same issues?

Have you monitored the process using a tool like Microsoft's Sysinternals Process Explorer to see what's actually going on and what is using memory?

[lsk2002]

Hi Arnis,

Yes I am updated. I ususally save as pdf., I am able to make a .ps, but the link in the Contents didn't work. Output is set to start immediately. I point to a specific folder. Not sure about the TEMP location but have 20g hard drive available. Have watched the processor as the book(s) print and it is only using 3.5 g of the 16 g ram. The TPS file takes a long time itself to show up and then it becomes a very large file before the document finishes printing to the .pdf. But, that isn't anything new.

FM has always been slow, and you know, I wouldn't care that much if I didn't have to open, reset, and save each document to work in the book again for printing. But this gets really old.

On my 32-bit computer, it would take a long time, but ever since I got this one, it just stops.

Thanks,

[Arnis_Gubins]

If you print to a .ps file, then you have enable the Generate Acrobat Data option in the Print panel in order to get features such as links to work in the final PDF.

With a 64-bit O/S and 16Gb of RAM, you should be seeing an improvement, rather than a degradation, of performance. It sounds like you have a configuration issue of some kind.

Try creating a simple, single page of text PDF of text before your larger FM document. This should initialize all features and wake up Distiller. Is there any improvement in the performance in creating the large document?

[lsk2002]

Hey there again.....One page is easy...made it quick. I tried just the body of my document instead of the book. (It is a 228 page doc....but I used to make huge docs with FM. After the file was made, I clicked into FM and got this msg.

Thanks,

ls

[Arnis_Gubins]

From the icon and style of the message, it does not look like a message generated from FM. Check to see what else is running.

[Arnis_Gubins]

Is there anything being written to the console window (consfile.txt file in the user area) when this happens?

[lsk2002]

Ha....now that you mention it....there is...we were just testing some things. I am also having a problem with links in this document...just weird. Anyway, have uninstalled, and installed. Have moved the book to desktop, and same happens. FM runs out of memory. Below are some pics.....I have never looked at the console error before. This is just for this books. Normally the pdf works, just that FM runs out of memory and I have to shut it down. This book just happens to be driving me nuts.

Thanks!

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Is your copy of FM10 installed on a network drive? I see E:\ as the path in one dialogue window.

[lsk2002]

Well, it was, but we installed to an external drive hoping to help the problem. Nothing has changed. This was happening before we re-installed to the other drive.

I now have another crazy problem though. Right after I posted, I went back to FM to try another file and it's links, hoping that it is just that book. Anyway, now I get a error saying that it can't find the file, make sure it exist. The only thing I can open is on my desktop. This is sooooo strange! Course I had moved the book to my desktop to see if it would be faster. Course it wasn't. I have rebooted and it still doesn't find files.

UGGGGG.....

I don't know what to do about all this. It was bad enough when it was shutting down every time.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

For what it’s worth, I don’t think FM was designed to run off external or network drives.

[Arnis_Gubins]

In the background of your console display, I do see some issues that could be causing the problem. First, fix up the consistency issue in your files. There is something set differently in (at least) one of the first files of the book for its print settings (it may be crop marks, separations, etc.).

The error with the PDF Reflow module is probably what's causing the out of memory error. You can actually turn this function off by commenting out the following line your maker.ini - just put a semi-colon (;) in front of it:

FMPDFReflow=Standard, Post-process PDF for Reflow, fminit\fmpdfreflow.dll,all

You can also comment out this line:

PDFSize=Standard, Optimize PDF Size, fminit\pdfsize.dll,all

These functions can be tweaked by Acrobat in the PDF afterwards and this will speed up your SaveAsPDF operation, as now FM isn't going to play with your intermediate postscript file.

[lsk2002]

OH wow!!! I was soooo hoping that would work. I made a pdf of a smaller book and it was fine. This one did the same....FM ran out of memory.....

Anything of any size is when this happens....this book isn't huge. But before this computer, although slow, this didn't happen.

Thanks!

[Arnis_Gubins]

Out of curiosity, just how big are these books (PDF size and the .tps file size before the PDF is created)? Do you have lots of graphics and what formats for the graphics are you using? Are these imporrted by copy or by reference?

[lsk2002]

The pdf of the current one is 37m / actual file size of the body of the document is 62m.. The current tps is 400m. I use tiffs and ai files that are all referenced. Seems this is just my problem. A co-worker just made the pdf in about 2 minutes.

One good thing. I had double spaces in the names of the files. Took those out and the links work in the pdf....yay!!.....Also, I didn't click on Tags. The file still took forever, but it didn't crash.

I am trying larger file right now that the  tps is 749m. Takes forever for the tps to start, much less make the pdf. Will let you know if it crashes on this.

Thanks,

ls

[lsk2002]

Soooo my pdf just got finished. Took almost 20 minutes. But the good part is that FM didn't crash. I didn't click on "Tags" in the pdf setup. Yay!! Guess it couldn't take that. Now if I could get it to work like everyone elses computer... And yes their computers are the same. The only difference in the co-worker's computer is that he has 40 g hard drive left and I only have 20 g. Hard drive space is 118 g. We have tons of programs including Solid Works. The older computer had a bigger hard drive. I guess I can try moving all my Adobe to the external drive. That is what another co-worker had to do.

What do you think?

Thanks,

ls

[Arnis_Gubins]

You don't need to create a "Tagged" PDF unless you're sending the PDFs out for review and importing the comments back into FM or creating accessible PDFs.

With the PS files that large, the paging operations that take place between FM and Distiller creating the PDF, with only 20Gbs of free space are probably the cause of your "out of memory" errors. You also have to account for the system paging file and any other activity taking place. Also have you ever defragmented your hard-drive (fragmentation will give you less actual usable space than reported as free)?  I'd recommended a bigger drive - terabyte sized drives are cheap and fast (for a real performance boost, get an SSD for your O/S and applications and then a big hard-drive for your data).

Filenaming with spaces can be dodgy, as not all applications properly parse the entire string (i.e. thy may stop at the first space). It's recommended to use underscores instead.

If your "external" drive is a mapped network drive, I really wouldn't recommend it for FM operations. FM (still) doesn't play well in network traffic (naive kid chasing ball onto freeway metaphor).

With your large files you could try printing to a .ps file first and then distilling that file [or try the small text file pdf first trick]. This should free up FM a lot quicker. You could also set Distiller (if you have the full version of Acrobat installed) to use Watched Folders and spool the .ps files to the watched one(s).

[lsk2002]

Thanks so much for all your help!! I will defrag and I guess move my Adobe programs to the external drive so that I will have more hard drive space. It isn't a network drive. I did try the small pdf trick and it didn't make any difference.

I will let you know if moving my programs makes a difference!!

Thanks again!!!

ls

[David__D]

Arnis Gubins wrote:

Also have you ever defragmented your hard-drive (fragmentation will give you less actual usable space than reported as free)? 

Windows 7 automatically defragments hard drives in the background when you're not doing much, so there's usually little need to manually run the defragmenter.

If the drive is an SSD, you shouldn't be defragging it at all!

[David__D]

Arnis Gubins wrote:

With a 64-bit O/S and 16Gb of RAM, you should be seeing an improvement, rather than a degradation, of performance. It sounds like you have a configuration issue of some kind.

Arnis, Adobe are still only supplying FrameMaker and Acrobat as 32 bit applications. So, I'm afraid that despite Windows being able to address all 16GB of computer's RAM, Frame and Acrobat are stuck running in a little 32bit emulation bubble, and can only use just over 3GB.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Yes, but the other things that you are running besides FM should be happier with more memory and free up resources for FM to use.

[David__D]

This is unlikely, Jeff. What the message means is that Frame (and/or Distiller) have run out of memory inside their WOW32 (32-bit 'Windows-on-Windows') embulation bubble. It doesn't matter if the entire rest of the system RAM is sitting empty - if Frame and Distiller try to do something that needs more than the 32 bit limit, they will fall over.
In other words, it doesn't matter how much RAM your computer has: Frame can only use 3.2GB of it.

I've also seen this happen with Corel Paint Shop Pro, which was 32 bit only until the latest (version X4) release: you try to edit a really big graphic and it gives you an out of memory error, even though the system has bucket loads free.

[FieryPantone]

I'll cheekily slip a related question into this thread – I'm just finishing the last project I need to deliver before a major PC upgrade, and now I've linked all the graphics into the book Acrobat doesn't have enough space in its current temp area on the C:\ drive. (yup, that upgrade is well overdue …) On the other hand, I have a very large D:\ partition which is completely empty. Any simple way of getting Acrobat to use a temp directory on D: instead of C:?

[Bob_Niland]

> Any simple way of getting Acrobat to use a temp directory on D: instead of C:?

You can try getting into (Might also need Admin privs to do this.)

Start > Control Panel > System&Security > System > Advanced > Environment Variables

and change both TEMP and TMP to D:\temp\temp and D:\temp\tmp respectively.

I'd also create those temp dirs if they don't exist.

Probably need to reboot.

You can also free up space on C: by not using C: for VM swap. Do this be adding another drive letter in ... Advanced > Performance > Advanced > Virtual memory [ Change ]. Then also change the Initial and Maximum space allocated on C: to the minimum allowed. Again may need to be Admin. Will need to reboot to free the old C: space.

Plus normal drive clean-up, of course: temp dirs, Windows Update downloads, web caches, deleted emails, etc.

[FieryPantone]

Thanks! though now I've got to sit through a day at the office before I can hurry home and try the tweaks you suggest …