Help for Lightroom 4.1 SLOW Performance Problems

[JoJo-LBB]

Hello All,
Finished a chat today with Adobe help in reference to Ligthroom 4.1 performance troubles. Thought I would post this info for those having the same trouble. For reference, my specs for the new machine I built are:

Win7, 64-bit; 16GB ram; 4-core AMD Phenom processor 3.2 GHz; SSD with Win, Photoshop & LightRoom installed on it; Nvidia GeForce 560 1GB; photos on secondary drive. CS5 12.1x64, LR4.1 CR 7.1

Installed 4.1 updated video drivers, tried all the "remedies" such as enlarging & clearing the cache, etc. Nothing worked. LR was SLOW SLOW, taking 5-9 seconds to be load and accept adjustments each time I selected a new image to adjust (no big deal for 10-20 images, but for 800 image weddings from 2 cameras, quite a long time to wait on the computer!!!) Called Adobe, they said they were aware of performance issues on some machines, and were working on it.

Got on Adobe chat help today. The following is the conversation, with superfluous comments etc. edited out. The simple procedure sped my LR performance up by at least 60-70% in my estimate. Amen.

I rarely surf the forums (I know I need to), and this is one of my very few posts, so please don't expect me to answer questions right away, though I'm sure others will. I just wanted to post this conversation so that others might have it available and maybe it will help them. Good luck!

Help Chat with Adobe's "William", June 11, 2012:
William: I understand that you're experiencing performance issue. Am I correct?
Jojo: Oh yes
William: Please close all windows except this chat window.
William: Click on Start button.
William: Type %appdata% in the search box and press Enter.
William: Double click on Adobe folder.
William: Check for the folder of Lightroom and rename it to "OldLightroom".
William: Click on Start button.
William: Type %temp% and press Enter.
William: It will open Temp folder.
William: Empty the files and folders inside it.
Jojo: ok done. it still has files that could not be deleted for Win Explorer and Google Chrome (the browser I use)
William: Okay.
William: Launch Lightroom and check if you're getting the same issue.
Jojo: that seems to have sped it up significant;y
William: Perfect.
William: Please double check if that works fine now.
Jojo: Much faster, but all of my presets are gone
Jojo: Export presets, etc
William: It was due to corrupt preference that was causing this issue.
William: Close Lightroom.
William: Click on Start button.
William: Type %appdata% in the search box and press Enter.
William: Double click on Adobe folder.
William: Check for the folder of Lightroom and rename it to "2OldLightroom".
William: Now check for the folder "OldLightroom" and rename it to ""Lightroom".
William: After that open Preferences folder inside it.
William: Check for the file "Lightroom 4 Preferences.agprefs" and rename it to "OldLightroom 4 Preferences.agprefs".
William: Launch Lightroom and check if that works fine for you.
Jojo: Oh yes, that's working well!
William: Perfect.
Jojo: Much better!
William: You can start working with the product smoothly now.
William: Great.
Jojo: Hey, are they fixing this in a release? I know a lot of photographers who are VERY upset about this performance issue. I was ready to change back to LR3
William: Corrupt preference may cause Lightroom to work slow.
William: We renamed the preference file and it is working fine.

- Works fine folks, much better. Hope it helps some of you!

[Padre]

Great information, thanks.

[UgashikBob]

JoJo:
Thanks for the tips. I also have been dealing with the speed problem and was not aware of the corruption issue after a lot of searching. To deal with the first portion of your post I use a free product called CCleaner that flushes all temps including browser, email, etc. I run it religiously every day.

[Neil Wharton]

That worked brilliantly thanks JoJo

[Preeb]

I just tried it myself and I'm impressed. LR4.1 was very slow when resolving a new RAW image, but now it's blinding fast. I saved Jo Jo's process as a text file so I can find it immediately if I need it again. Thank you very much Jo Jo.

[Frogstar]

Thanks for the information JoJo. I tried it but it didn't work for me, but..........
Inside the preferences folder I renamed the Lightroom 4 Preferences.agprefs to Old_Lightroom 4 Preferences.agprefs but it didn't make any difference and I lost a load of information. I returned it to the original settings. I also found a file called Lightroom 3 Preferences.agprefs which I presume was leftover from the undate from LR3 to LR4. I renames this file Old_Lightroom 3 Preferences.agprefs and now it works a lot quicker. Who knows why but I'm a lot happier :>)

[galusca]

Install new Lightroom 4.4 BETA release. It works for me. Speed issue fixed.

Download Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.4 Beta - Adobe Labs

[Terry FII]

Originally Posted by galusca

Install new Lightroom 4.4 BETA release. It works for me. Speed issue fixed.

Download Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.4 Beta - Adobe Labs

When the candidate release expires in may does adobe offer a discount for those who helped using the beta version?