Slow everything

LisaMBlair

I've been using Zotero standalone for almost 2 years now as a PhD student and I currently have 4,458 items in my library, but things are running unbearably slowly. Any change to the library - adding an item to an additional collection by drag-and-drop, removing an item from a collection, moving something to trash, and on opening the program I get a delay of several seconds to sometimes a couple of minutes. I work with the references in the manager rather extensively, so the delays add up pretty quick.

I'm on a Windows 8.1 machine with an i5 4300U CPU @ 1.90GHz and 2.50 GHz, 8GB of RAM on a Surface Pro 3. My internet connection is stable with no proxies or changes to the security settings since before the problem started.

I tried removing all my PDF attachments and snapshots as I've been told that those tend to slow things down but the performance hasn't improved at all. Finally, I tried installing the Firefox plug-in (despite my general preference for local services and a different browser). At first it seemed a little faster, but now it's right back to lagging out at every change.

The report errors tool generated this output:

[JavaScript Error: "bad script XDR magic number"]
[JavaScript Error: "bad script XDR magic number"]

version => 4.0.26.4, platform => Win32, oscpu => Windows NT 6.3; WOW64, locale => en-US, appName => Zotero, appVersion => 4.0.26.4, extensions => Zotero LibreOffice Integration (3.5.9.SA.4.0.26.4, extension), Zotero Word for Windows Integration (3.1.18.SA.4.0.26.4, extension), Java(TM) Platform SE 8 U45 (11.45.2.15, plugin), Java Deployment Toolkit 8.0.450.15 (11.45.2.15, plugin), Google Update (1.3.27.5, plugin), Adobe Acrobat (11.0.11.18, plugin), Microsoft Office 2013 (15.0.4514.1000, plugin), Microsoft Office 2010 (14.0.4761.1000, plugin), Microsoft Office 2010 (14.0.4730.1010, plugin)

I vastly prefer Zotero standalone to every other reference manager I've tried (including the Firefox plug-in) and would love to continue using it, so any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

adamsmith

Have you tried minimizing the tag selector on the left? On Windows touchscreen machines (like the Surface Pro) that seems to cause awful lags.

LisaMBlair

By tag selector, do you mean the panel that displays the reference information and has tabs to let you add notes? I tried minimizing it just now and I still get the same amount of lag.

DWL-SDCA

The tag selector is at the bottom of the left column ( the list of collections). If you don't see it, it may already be minimized.

LisaMBlair

Ah! I don't think I'd ever honestly noticed that down there. It seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks so much!