(Archived) Closing Evernote causes cascading hangs in other apps

[lojic 0]

After recently upgrading to 5.4.0 (I just now upgraded to 5.4.1, so we'll see if that helps), I started re-experiencing a strange problem that had occurred on older versions of Evernote but seemed to go away with the update prior to 5.4.0.

 

Sometimes, when I close Evernote, it will hang and start taking 80+% CPU. However, what's really strange is that after that happens, *every* other app I attempt to close (except some rare exceptions such as my Emacs editor) also hangs and begins taking 80+% CPU. Force quitting the apps will close them, but my system is still hosed and the only option is holding down the power button for 8 seconds or so.

 

It took me a *long* time to narrow down the culprit to Evernote because it used to be a rare occurrence (however, it's happened twice in the last few days), but eventually, I noticed a pattern - it always happened directly after closing Evernote. It used to seem like it only happened when Evernote had been open for a long time, but recently it's happened when it's only been open for a few minutes. There *may* be a correlation with adding images to a note, but I haven't verified that.

 

If the 5.4.1 upgrade doesn't fix this, I may have to stop using Evernote (or only use the web + phone which would be a pain) because I can't afford to power cycle my laptop to fix the problem.

 

Mac OS X 10.6.8

 

Model Name: MacBook Pro

  Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,2

  Processor Name: Intel Core i7

  Processor Speed: 2 GHz

  Number of Processors: 1

  Total Number of Cores: 4

  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 6 MB

  Memory: 8 GB

  Boot ROM Version: MBP81.0047.B27

  SMC Version (system): 1.69f4

 

Has anyone else experienced this? Any ideas what may be the cause? I think the fact that my Emacs editor is exempt is interesting. It's not a traditional Mac GUI app, so maybe it's launched differently.

 

Thanks,

Brian Adkins

 

[lojic 0]

Some more information. I use Launchbar and Spark to launch apps. I typically start Evernote via Spark. I'm going to try only starting it via a dock icon to see if that is somehow related.

[lojic 0]

I haven't used the desktop app for Evernote much since my last post, but today the problem recurred. This is after upgrading to the latest version of Evernote and starting the app via the dock icon vs. using Launchbar or Spark.

 

Two things that seem to correlate to the problem are:

1) Evernote has been up for a while (maybe an hour or so this time)

2) I've copied/pasted something into Evernote (vs. just typing a note)

 

I don't recall the problem ever occurring when I open Evernote, use for a short period of time (few minutes) and quit. But if it's been open for a while, the problem is likely. It *only* happens with Evernote and is very consistent - attempting to quit Evernote will hang, and then *every* other app (except Emacs for some strange reason) that I attempt to quit will also hang. The only solution is holding the power button down for 8 secs or so to do a hard shutdown.

 

I think my only other option is to see if the problem happens after I upgrade from Snow Leopard to Mavericks. If it does, I think I'll just have to stop using Evernote

 

Hmm... I just re-read my original post above which mentions it happening when Evernote was open a short time, so I guess I can rule out "being open for a long time" as a contributing factor. It's still possible that has something to do with copy/past into Evernote which would seem odd. Maybe I'll try opening Evernote and never pasting into it to see if I can also rule that out.