NEED HELP Zotero keeps crashing

petrahyklova
Hello,
I took a few days off work to finish my dissertation. I was therefore very surprised when Zotero began freezing and crashing sometimes right after the start, change of sort order, mark several items at once or merge duplicates. I was waiting for several hours just to make a few small changes in my database. I tried reinstalling, deleting all attachments from the server, looking for solutions for this problem, such as region setting, but usually, it referred to old Windows features that are no longer on my computer. I did not succeed to get a log from Zotero, as after every restart it claims nothing happened.

Please let me know as soon as possible if this problem will continue and for how long and if I should switch to another citation manager.

Thanks, Petra
  • damnation
    As it sounds like you are under time pressure and stressed, please don't do anything irrational or try various things. You could do more damage than good. The support team here is outstanding and fast (but give them time to wake up; American time zones).

    In the meantime, you can probably already provide a Debug output to save yourself some time. See: https://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output
  • dstillman
    @petrahyklova: What word processor and exact version?

    In a large document, you'll want to make sure that "Automatically update citations" is disabled in the Zotero plugin's document preferences window.

    Beyond that, it's not entirely clear what you mean here. E.g.,
    I was waiting for several hours just to make a few small changes in my database.
    Are your referring to your database, or something about your dissertation? This wouldn't have anything to do with attachments on the server, region settings, etc., so as damnation says, you should certainly stop trying random strings.

    What's an exact step you're taking, and what exactly is happening?
  • petrahyklova
    edited February 8, 2022
    I did not use any word processor, it did not even come to that. I was working in the Zotero Windows 10 program. Need to deduplicate come items and create bibliographies in Zotero and copy them to MS Word as I need to attach bibliographies to several different chapters. But even selecting more than one item or opening Duplicates causes Zotero to freeze and crash. Usually I have to start Zotero several times, because it keeps crashing.
  • dstillman
    But even selecting more than one item or opening Duplicates causes Zotero to freeze and crash.
    Are you actually saying that just selecting two items in your library causes Zotero to crash, or are you specifically talking about the Duplicate Items view?

    While the Duplicate Items view certainly shouldn't cause Zotero to crash, you can merge items just by selecting two items in the normal items list, right-clicking, and choosing Merge Items.

    When you say it's crashing, what exactly do you mean? Is it freezing, or is it closing completely? If it's crashing, do you get a crash report from your OS?

    Can you provide a Report ID after starting Zotero?
  • petrahyklova
    edited February 8, 2022
    I tried it several times. Sometimes I manage to merge two records and then Zotero freezes before showing other duplicates. Several times i froze when I selected multiple items, but now it did not.

    Merging manually is not an option. I have thousands of citations. Duplicates folder shows hundreds of items

    Freezing, then usually closing completely.

    After I start Zotero again, it shows a message about no error being logged after starting the program.

    Report ID: 1565231677
  • petrahyklova
    Debug ID D1327499481
  • dstillman
    Merging manually is not an option. I have thousands of citations. Duplicates folder shows hundreds of items
    You can still sort your library by title and quickly scan for duplicates.
    Freezing, then usually closing completely.
    But you don't get any sort of error from the OS after the program crashes?
    Found duplicates in 51931 ms
    It's taking 52 seconds to find duplicates in your library, which is a pretty long time. How many items do you have in your library? How old is this computer? How much memory does it have? If you watch Zotero in Task Manager, how much memory does it use before it crashes?

    Is it any better immediately after restarting your computer?

    Zotero 6 will be available soon and it's unlikely there'll be further Zotero 5 updates, so one thing you can try is installing the Zotero beta (which will become Zotero 6) to see if that helps.

    Beyond that, you may just need to hold off on using Duplicate Items for now.
  • petrahyklova
    Thanks!

    Items in my library: 3509
    Might there be a problem with duplicate detection if most of them do not have DOI (these are historical bibliographies)?

    The task manager shows high usage of physical memory when Zotero is frozen (this time no crash, just unfreeze and drop in physical memory usage).

    System info:
    memory 8GB (Zotero used less than 2GB)
    procesor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8265U CPU @ 1.60GHz 1.80 GHz
    Notebook is about 2 years old, Acer Swift SF314-56

    After restart, I did not notice any change. I will try the Zotero beta.
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