Evernote (Not responding)

[gsw 2]

Evernote (not responding) happens for me nearly every time I attempt to open it.  A look at the Task Manager shows that it is, in fact, working, just ever so slowly.  Chrome also shows (not responding) from time to time, about monthly.  Evernote does it several times a day.  You update quite often and I keep hoping the new update will work more quickly but, as of today's new update, it's the same old (not responding).  Please, fix it or tell me how to fix it.

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi.  Evernote (obviously) shouldn't have this sort of issue unless you have a lot of notes (25000+).  What's your OS?  I'd suggest you go through whatever disk space / memory / fragmentation / tidy up issues you can identify just to make sure it's not a matter of overall performance.  Evernote may use more resources than a lot of software,  but it's not a total hog - if things are getting tight though,  you may see it more when Evernote is trying to do something.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Evernote (not responding) happens for me nearly every time I attempt to open it.  

 

This is a well-known and reported Evernote issue.   Evernote definitely needs to fix it.

 

Until they do, I have observed from reports in these forums that this issue, and performance in general, can be greatly helped by making either/both of two hardware changes:

• Increase RAM to a total of 8GB or more.
• Replace the normal spinning hard drive with SSD (Solid State Drive)

Both of these will not only improve Evernote performance, but the performance of your OS and all apps running on it.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Evernote has released several bug fixes to address the "not responding" problem.

 

Several users have pointed out the fast performance improvement by purchasing & installing a SSD. However, I doubt that Evernote will ever publicly state that the solution is to replace a hard drive with a SSD. They haven't yet.

 

I have three band-aid approaches to reduce the number of "not responding" delays.

 

1.) Keep Evernote running all day and all night long.

2.) Use other programs to spread the data and keep my Evernote notes under 30K. OneDrive, DropBox, Flickr.

2.) When I run into the "not responding" problem, I head for the kitchen, brew a cup of coffee and wait it out.

[TerryS 13]

I cannot drink that much coffee. :-) 

 

Now that I am not using the Outlook clipper, I put my notes in an outlook folder called "forward to evernote" and send them by running a rule once or twice a day.

 

Then, I have the day's email as untagged notes.

 

When I'm cleaning them up and tagging them, I open 10 at a time. Usually with each 10 I'll get the "not responding message" and that give me time to post here!

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

When I'm cleaning them up and tagging them, I open 10 at a time. Usually with each 10 I'll get the "not responding message" and that give me time to post here!

 

Well, IMO, you should not be getting the "not responding message" just for opening 10 Notes in individual windows.

This seems like a bug and/or design flaw to me.

For comparison, I just tested this in EN Mac 6.0.11, and it worked fine.  No error msg, no performance issues.

So, I'd suggest you submit a bug report.

 

Until Evernote makes a fix I wonder if you can avoid opening so many Notes at once?

 

If you just want to assign tags to multiple Notes, or move all of them to the same Notebook, then all you need to do is first select the Notes (not open them).

Then you should see the multi-note display providing an option to assign tags, move to NB, as well as other stuff.

Would this work for you?

 

I recommend that everyone who experiences a bug to submit a bug report.  This will make sure that Evernote is aware of the issue, provide your environment data to help identify/fix the issue, and put more pressure on Evernote to fix.

 

Submit a BUG report via an EN Support Ticket. In the Support Form, select "Report a bug", and start the Ticket Title with "BUG:  " to make it clear.  Reporting a bug should be available to all users, including Free Account owners.  Other Ticket types available to Free users are "Data Loss", "Crash", & "Sync Issue".

[TerryS 13]

Well, 10 does not seem like many notes.

 

I'm working through my inbox at the moment and I tried snippet view, but I feel I don't see enough of the note to decide what to do with it.

 

I have a MAC at work, I'll try processing my notes there, too.

 

(Posted while waiting for EN to respond after opening 3 notes.)

[TerryS 13]

And it just happened when I opened 1 note.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Well, 10 does not seem like many notes.

 

I'm working through my inbox at the moment and I tried snippet view, but I feel I don't see enough of the note to decide what to do with it.

 

You might try:

1. Filtering by date range to include only those Notes that need to be classified
2. Sort by Title to group related notes
3. Filter by Title keywords to show related notes

This should make it easier to identify and select common notes.

[CalS 5,280]

@TerryS,

 

By open do you mean Shift-Select?  Makes no sense if you are getting any kind of a lag when doing that, I wouldn't think.  Have you checked your activity log to see if EN is looping or something.  No reason it should be I suppose, but just in case.  What version are you running?

[TerryS 13]

Do you mean open by shift-enter?  I don't know shift select.

 

 

I downgraded to the earlier clipper. I believe I had the problem with the current version as well.

[CalS 5,280]

Yes, same thing, and then you can add tags to the group that's been selected.

 

Hmm.  Don't know how the clipper would affect this since the notes are already in EN.  I meant what version of EN are using.

 

Are you changing the notebook on the notes, or anything which might force a sync? 

[TerryS 13]

Ok, that is what I'm doing. Version is 5.8.6.7519.

 

When I open 10 notes, after they are all completely open at full screen--so I can only see one note--I am doing whatever is necessary. Changing notebooks, tags, as necessary.

 

Thanks. 

[CalS 5,280]

There are more current versions of EN available, some of which purportedly address some of the freeze issues.   The current public release is 5.8.13.  You might consider checking for updates under Help and updating to that release to see if it addresses your issues.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Ok, that is what I'm doing. Version is 5.8.6.7519.

 

When I open 10 notes, after they are all completely open at full screen--so I can only see one note--I am doing whatever is necessary. Changing notebooks, tags, as necessary.

 

Thanks. 

 

What is the benefit of opening 10 notes into separate windows and viewing each full screen?

Why do you need all 10 Notes open at once?

 

If you maximize the main EN window, then you should have ample room to view each note in the Note contents pane as you click on each Note in the Note list.

 

Did you try the suggestions I made above?

[TerryS 13]

Yes, I'm following the suggestions, I still need to fully open the note to decide what to do with it.

 

I updated to 5.8.13 and it still freezes.

 

I've got the new horrible outlook clip tool, which is why I downgraded to a previous version.

 

But, expecting that to be the new norm, I don't use either clip tool now. I move messages to a Forward to Evernote folder that I send to evernote 1 to 3 times a day using a rule in Outlook.

 

This method means I cannot tag until after notes get to evernote. Therefore, I have to open every note to decide that to do with it.

 

I accept this as a condition of use until it gets better...or doesnt. :-) 

 

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. I'll keep reading google news/technology during each freeze.  

[FrankG1 0]

 

Evernote (not responding) happens for me nearly every time I attempt to open it.  

 

This is a well-known and reported Evernote issue.   Evernote definitely needs to fix it.

 

Until they do, I have observed from reports in these forums that this issue, and performance in general, can be greatly helped by making either/both of two hardware changes:

• Increase RAM to a total of 8GB or more.
• Replace the normal spinning hard drive with SSD (Solid State Drive)

Both of these will not only improve Evernote performance, but the performance of your OS and all apps running on it.

 

I have 8GB of RAM and a SSD and still it freezes constantly at inopportune times

[FrankG1 0]

I'm a premium member and I have 8GB of RAM and a SSD and still the program freezes constantly at inopportune times. Every day there is a program download and everyday the same thing constant freezing (NOT responding) so I have to close and open the program sometime three time or more when researching to write one paragraph.  It hasn't always been like this.  

[gazumped 11,652]

As a premium user you have access to the support team and the chat facility - have you raised this with them?  I'm still running stone-age hard drives without many problems...

[Hogmeister 5]

I have the exact same issue - I reluctantly finally upgraded from a trusty old version (4.9?) a few months back, and ever since then Evernote is like swimming through treacle.  The simplest thing (e.g. right click on a note so you can move it to a different notebook) can take 10 seconds or more before the pop-up window opens.  This isn't an intermittent, every few days issue - this is happening to me literally dozens of times each day.

Just over 10,000 notes, my system has 6Gb of memory and I don't have an SSD drive.

[brucequinn 8]

On the theme of EVERNOTE NOT RESPONDING, as a spare toss in the beach bag PC I just got an ASUS E205HA notebook - the $200 Win10 budgetbook.  It actually runs Word and Powerpoint pretty darn well.   But Evernote shows up as "Not Responding" about every 30 seconds.   So I *can* keep an Evernote archive on it (10,000 notes, 2 gb), but I should only use it when I really need to.   I didn't expect much from a $200 2GB RAM machine, but my lesson is, Office works pretty well but not Evernote.

[pobo 1]

"not responding" has been a problem i have faced FOR YEARS.

 

FYI, It don't matter what the operating system is.  This has cause me to dump evernote from time to time as its been grossly unreliable.

It hasn't been my OS or system given that

1. ive used it from Windows 7 to windows 10.1

2. ive used it on 2 laptops

3. Ive used it on a windows PC which was the new with latest specs at the time

4. ive used it on a MAC MINI with 8 gigs of Ram

5. ive used it on a ipad large and ipad mini (new)

6. Ive used it on an android device with 8 cores and 2 gig of ram

the list goes on

and all have had the same issue - NOT RESPONDING or slow and unresponsive.

I would say from the above the best performer is #6 so far and running it on an android device.

[straightforward 1]

Why are a lot of you responding to this topic since you obviously don't know what you're talking about. Replace hard drive? Increase RAM? Complaining that Evernote hasn't addressed a bug. Really? I was searching for an answer and saw a ton of ridiculous responses. Don't waste our times guys. This is not a chat forum to talk about other stuff. Stay on topic.

[jefito 5,589]

2 hours ago, straightforward said:

Why are a lot of you responding to this topic since you obviously don't know what you're talking about. Replace hard drive? Increase RAM? Complaining that Evernote hasn't addressed a bug. Really? I was searching for an answer and saw a ton of ridiculous responses. Don't waste our times guys. This is not a chat forum to talk about other stuff. Stay on topic.

Not sure what you're expecting here. This is a known problem (I'm sure that Evernote knows about it, too), without a known solution. Some folks have found that putting your Evernote database on an SSD will improve this (it did for me); that's good -- and relevant -- information, as there's no real answer as yet, but that can help some cases. There's nothing here that's non-topical; there's just no known fix. Of course we want Evernote to solve this; I have a feeling that if it were easy to fix, then they would have already, as this directly affects user interaction with the Evernote application.

[gsw 2]

Which of the Evernote alternatives now available to which Evernote notes can be imported offers the best options for 

1.  Sorting

2.  Storing

3. Reading

4. General manipulation, i.e. merging, moving, viewing, etc.

5. Clipping

These are the features that lead me, in 2008, to upgrade to a paid account.  I am astonished at how many in this forum are accepting this problem and proposing "work-arounds" including some that are rather expensive.  I shouldn't have to "work-around" a program I pay for to get it to perform the functions it advertised itself as performing.  (It is maybe worth noting that earlier versions -much earlier ones- didn't have this problem.  Evernote has built a bug it didn't have.  How did it get released?)

I now have over 65,000 notes.  I don't want to lose them in an alternative or not be able to find them.

Many in this forum have pointed out that Evernote knows about this situation.  I don't want to be snarky or to dismiss the value of other improvements that other users propose but when I install an update to find that it changes the background color of parts of the screen when basic functions work so poorly, I have to think that Evernote is simply displaying an instinct for the capillary when the artery is cut.

[DTLow 5,736]

24 minutes ago, gsw said:

Which of the Evernote alternatives now available to which Evernote notes can be imported offers the best options for ...

This is an Evernote sponsored forum so it would be tacky to discuss alternative products in any detail

My primary concern would be the retrieval options for my data.
The tag organization feature is at the top of my list

[Hogmeister 5]

For what its worth, I am also at a similar point - tbh it seems crazy to continue to use a product which has such a fundamental issue.

I stayed on an old version of EN for several years after EN support were unable to resolve my big issue at that time (crashing when moving notes between folders) and advised me to stay on the old one.  Having "upgraded" to the latest version about a year ago,  that particular issue has returned.  Plus now the issue on this thread of "not responding".  Plus the issue with the web clipper ("not connected to the internet" message) which makes it unusable for 80% of the time.

If I had just downloaded this software I would uninstall and look for an alternative immediately, as it clearly is broken.  It's just habit that's keeping me here and using EN.

I have been a huge fan and advocate of EN, and literally use it to manage my life.  I use it on IOS (phone and iPad) and Windows.  But over the last few years the various EN updates have done absolutely nothing for me (honestly struggling to think of a single improvement), while not only have issues like this remained unresolved, in many cases (like the unresponding issue here) they have just got worse.

When I get around to it, I'll be heading off to look for a suitable alternative.

 

 

[andreb 15]

It seems that history is repeating. Starting today, Evernote stopped working on my business notebook. "Not responding". I hope support will be responding to my ticket #1888282.

[andreb 15]

Just figured - it's not related to my account. I created a fresh one and it's also stuck. Seems like Evernote_6.4.2.3773 is suffering from one big bug.

 

 

[gazumped 11,652]

1 hour ago, andreb said:

Just figured - it's not related to my account. I created a fresh one and it's also stuck. Seems like Evernote_6.4.2.3773 is suffering from one big bug.

That's the same version I use and I don't have a problem,  neither -apparently- do the several others who've responded to the release thread,  though there are plenty of comments about colors.  If you haven't already, I'd suggest you contact support directly if you can,  or message them on Twitter

[jbenson2 2,147]

I've dealt with Evernote's "Not Responding" issue for several years. After contacting support, I followed their suggestion and moved some of my notes to a second account. No success. Evernote is aware of the problem. They have mentioned it in several of their upgrades bullet points over the years. But I have never seen any formal response from the company on what is causing this problem.

Other users have offered solutions ranging from a complete uninstall / re-install to buying more RAM or even installing a new SSD drive. 

I understand why Evernote won't discuss their future marketing plans, but this is a bug that they are unable to solve. It is frustrating that they refuse to comment on what is causing this recurring problem to many of their users. 

[TerryS 13]

My "not responding" issue has disappeared. I've changed two things: I now use a MAC instead of a PC, and I never use a tool to send email to EN, I'm using mail.app most of the time (I resort to Outlook when necessary) and I forward each mail message individually.

 

My hypothesis: the Outlook tool sends an entire conversation to EN and as the conversation grows the whole thread is sent again when I use the "send to EN" option.

Before I changed to a MAC I started sending messages one by one (usually I only need parts of a conversation) and the problem disappeared.

If the conversation has a large attachment, it seemed to me that the attachment was sent to EN each time I sent the conversation.

Once I started sending individual mail (by forwarding from Outlook or mail.app to my EN email address) I've had no problems and EN doesn't hang.

 

 

[andreb 15]

13 minutes ago, jbenson2 said:

I've dealt with Evernote's "Not Responding" issue for several years. After contacting support, I followed their suggestion and moved some of my notes to a second account. No success. Evernote is aware of the problem. They have mentioned it in several of their upgrades bullet points over the years. But I have never seen any formal response from the company on what is causing this problem.

Other users have offered solutions ranging from a complete uninstall / re-install to buying more RAM or even installing a new SSD drive. 

I understand why Evernote won't discuss their future marketing plans, but this is a bug that they are unable to solve. It is frustrating that they refuse to comment on what is causing this recurring problem to many of their users. 

Funny thing, it seems to be sorted now. What I did was simply deinstall everything, trashing all folders, fresh reinstall. Then, when the "log in or create account" window appears, I went to the settings (because I thought it could have been the proxy). Not finding the proxy, I just changed the appearence from dark to bright. 

Now it's reacting and syncing.

Could be a coincidence, but doesn't have to. The dark theme is something new.

[eafpres 111]

There are lots of threads on this general topic and I apologize for not reading every one, but wanted to provide an update.

Evernote support has been pretty good with me working on "Not Responding". In the last couple of weeks, they provided a couple of useful tidbits:

1) Turn off context--this apparently uses background resources or somehow can degrade performance.  I wasn't attached to content so I turned it off.  I think it helps but does not cure.

2) I'm sure this has been covered but a couple of times they have asked me to move my databases and resync.  That definitely helps.  For me, it takes 6 hours to do it, so it isn't an every day thing.  Unfortunately, it also wears off fairly quickly.

3) They explained that there are some background processes that are 32 bit even on 64-bit systems.  These processes are memory constrained.  I was told they are working to fix this in the next couple of releases.

4) They reminded me of the expanded menu by Ctrl+(click help menu), which contains an "Optimize Database".  It was suggested as an alternative to the full resync.

[EdH 1,670]

I personally think the issue is that single database file Evernote has to maintain. This never happens for me on macOS because it uses directories and files for its database, not a proprietary exb file. 

I have a Surface Pro 4 with an ssd and 16gb of ram. It isn't my machine. 

[andreb 15]

On 11/1/2016 at 4:03 PM, andreb said:

Funny thing, it seems to be sorted now. What I did was simply deinstall everything, trashing all folders, fresh reinstall. Then, when the "log in or create account" window appears, I went to the settings (because I thought it could have been the proxy). Not finding the proxy, I just changed the appearence from dark to bright. 

Now it's reacting and syncing.

Could be a coincidence, but doesn't have to. The dark theme is something new.

It was not sorted, unfortunately. The first sync went perfectly, but closing evernote and reopening it resulted in the "not responding" again.

The solution that works now: rolled back to 6.3.3 public. Works perfectly.

[jefito 5,589]

2 hours ago, EdH said:

a proprietary exb file

Just a quibble here: .exb files are SQLite databases, so not really proprietary, unless you consider their schema and access as proprietary, which seems a bit of a stretch. SQLite is open source, and .exb files can be spelunked -- for all of the good it will do you -- with easily available tools.

That being said, the database does seem to be a bottleneck of sorts (and it seemed to be related to text search, from what I recall). All of these problems went away for me when I put my Evernote data files on SSD, on both of the machines that I use. That would tend to point me in the direction of the database, if I had to try to figure out where the problem was. No question that it would be great if this were fixed; it's really a teeth-gnasher when it happens, and you shouldn't need to invest in an SSD to mitigate things...

[eafpres 111]

My system is a lenovo Y50 touch (touch disabled)

Windows 10

Chrome

latest evernote

latest clipper

WD WD10S21X-24R1BT0-SSHD-8GB 1TB

There appear to be issues with this drive and the firmware.  I installed a little utility that keeps the drive awake.  That has helped my performance.  Yes, it is a crude hack, but as I'm in EN all day every day, and I put my computer to sleep when not working, it's a compromise I'm willing to make right now.

I also forced Evernote and Chrome to use the nVIDIA GPU instead of the default.  That seemed to help some.

Bottom line, faster hardware surely helps, but I think with average hardware you should not get "Not Responding".  So let's hope they have figured out some things and we see improvement.

[EdH 1,670]

41 minutes ago, jefito said:

Just a quibble here: .exb files are SQLite databases, so not really proprietary, unless you consider their schema and access as proprietary, which seems a bit of a stretch. SQLite is open source, and .exb files can be spelunked -- for all of the good it will do you -- with easily available tools.

That being said, the database does seem to be a bottleneck of sorts (and it seemed to be related to text search, from what I recall). All of these problems went away for me when I put my Evernote data files on SSD, on both of the machines that I use. That would tend to point me in the direction of the database, if I had to try to figure out where the problem was. No question that it would be great if this were fixed; it's really a teeth-gnasher when it happens, and you shouldn't need to invest in an SSD to mitigate things...

Point taken. Then the SQLite database is not capable of handling what the Evernote .exe is throwing at it. It hasn't since 4.x, and it got really bad with 5.x, and continues to this day. Sometimes it is faster for me to open up Chrome and go to Evernote there and type my notes.

[jefito 5,589]

3 hours ago, eafpres said:

I also forced Evernote and Chrome to use the nVIDIA GPU instead of the default.  That seemed to help some.

?? How'd you do that with Evernote? I don't see it using the GPU at all, in Process Explorer.

3 hours ago, EdH said:

Point taken. Then the SQLite database is not capable of handling what the Evernote .exe is throwing at it.

It was just a quibble, no worries.  Still not sure how the Mac way (folders 'n files) would make this faster, but there's definitely a problem with the current scheme.

[EdH 1,670]

1 hour ago, jefito said:

?? How'd you do that with Evernote? I don't see it using the GPU at all, in Process Explorer.

It was just a quibble, no worries.  Still not sure how the Mac way (folders 'n files) would make this faster, but there's definitely a problem with the current scheme.

With database, if you delete a note or remove an attachment EN compacts the database. Vacuum is what I think SQLite called it. 

That is coffee time. Just one example. Happens many more times than just that. 

[eafpres 111]

Regarding GPU--I did 2 things. Changed the global default to the nVIDIA GPU, and in the nVIDIA control panel, set Everote to use the GPU in 3D settings.  The latter seems confusing but I read somewhere that was how to do it.

[jefito 5,589]

14 hours ago, eafpres said:

Regarding GPU--I did 2 things. Changed the global default to the nVIDIA GPU, and in the nVIDIA control panel, set Everote to use the GPU in 3D settings.  The latter seems confusing but I read somewhere that was how to do it.

Ok, thanks. I have NVidia here at home, so I see it now. Still don't believe that Evernote uses the GPU, though -- it's not showing any GPU use at all in Process Explorer. I doubt that that's helping much, if at all.

Edit: That's not to say that the GPU can't be brought to bear on text-based problems (which is what is most likely the bottleneck); there's definitely interest in doing that, based on web searches. I just don't think that Evernote are doing that, at least at present.

[eafpres 111]

16 hours ago, jefito said:

Ok, thanks. I have NVidia here at home, so I see it now. Still don't believe that Evernote uses the GPU, though -- it's not showing any GPU use at all in Process Explorer. I doubt that that's helping much, if at all.

Edit: That's not to say that the GPU can't be brought to bear on text-based problems (which is what is most likely the bottleneck); there's definitely interest in doing that, based on web searches. I just don't think that Evernote are doing that, at least at present.

I think you are right, I mainly wanted to document things I've tried.

At present, with the changes I've made I typically get a big Not Responding if I'm away from EN for a while then jump in to do something, like edit a note.  Typically the first few things I do are fine then it locks up.  After those big hang ups, I am getting good performance for most of the day.

In addition to text, I have seen that copy/paste images can initiate the problem as well.  Hard to reallly repro, but that is my impression.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

On 11/16/2016 at 8:23 AM, eafpres said:

Evernote support has been pretty good with me working on "Not Responding". In the last couple of weeks, they provided a couple of useful tidbits:

Thanks for sharing, but it would be much more helpful if you would provide exact steps to do each of the workarounds you mentioned.

A link for each to a page with step-by-step instructions would be great customer service.

[sinman 3]

This happens to me also. Sometimes have to use the web version because of the numerous hangs...

[eafpres 111]

10 hours ago, JMichaelTX said:

Thanks for sharing, but it would be much more helpful if you would provide exact steps to do each of the workarounds you mentioned.

A link for each to a page with step-by-step instructions would be great customer service.

1) Set sync to every 5 minutes.  I did this because it seems doing lots of little syncs is less disruptive than less frequent but larger syncs.  I also sync manually quite often so I can edit something I just clipped.  See screen shot.

2) Changed the global default to the nVIDIA GPU, and in the nVIDIA control panel, set Chrome to use the GPU and set Everote to use the GPU in 3D settings.  The latter seems confusing but I read somewhere that was how to do it.

3) I installed a little utility that keeps the drive awake.  That has helped my performance.  Yes, it is a crude hack, but as I'm in EN all day every day, and I put my computer to sleep when not working, it's a compromise I'm willing to make right now.  It is available here:

https://keepalivehd.codeplex.com/Wikipage?ProjectName=keepalivehd

4) Changed search settings to longer delay for "search as you type".  See 2nd attached screen shot.  This value is likely not optimal, but better than default.  The reason I did this is that in the past I had trouble with this causing hanging as I typed.  It is possible even longer would be better.  I don't really like search as you type, FWIW.

 

[CalS 5,280]

58 minutes ago, eafpres said:

1) Set sync to every 5 minutes.  I did this because it seems doing lots of little syncs is less disruptive than less frequent but larger syncs.  I also sync manually quite often so I can edit something I just clipped.

Have you tried enabling Instant Sync?  I find it works well, typically the note is synced within 10 seconds or so of changing context,  May take longer if it is a massive note.

The only time I have had a problem with instant sync is when I do a mass change, like adding a tag to a large group of notes or moving a large group of notes between notebooks.  The problem being extended sync times.  Turn off instant sync in those instances and all is well.  It seems a lot of pending instant syncs and a regular don't always get along.  Other than that works very nicely.  FYI, I use 5 minutes as well;.  FWIW.

[eafpres 111]

10 hours ago, csihilling said:

Have you tried enabling Instant Sync?  I find it works well, typically the note is synced within 10 seconds or so of changing context,  May take longer if it is a massive note.

The only time I have had a problem with instant sync is when I do a mass change, like adding a tag to a large group of notes or moving a large group of notes between notebooks.  The problem being extended sync times.  Turn off instant sync in those instances and all is well.  It seems a lot of pending instant syncs and a regular don't always get along.  Other than that works very nicely.  FYI, I use 5 minutes as well;.  FWIW.

Thank you. I'm giving it a try. 

[CalS 5,280]

Let us know.  

[eafpres 111]

Here are some updates:

1) Instant sync--I noticed considerable and ongoing lag when creating a document directly in Evernote or editing existing.  It may have worked fine for clipped notes, but for me no net positive.  I turned it back off.

Extra: I clip a lot of scientific articles in PDF from the internet.  There typically are things I need to do to the clipped note, such as change the url or add checkbox items.  For those reasons my habit is to clip a note, then go to EN Windows, sync and do the clean up.  This reduces the instance of notes for which I neglected to do the clean up.  Because of this, instant sync for clipping doesn't help me.  Given the issues for editing, I won't use it.  This is not to say it will not be a plus for others.

2) I have noted before that copy/paste edits often cause the No Responding issue.  Today I found that cut/paste does not induce the same issue.  My test is not exhaustive but I did reproduce it once.

[CalS 5,280]

Thanks for the follow up.  Could be my use case is better suited to instant sync.

[eafpres 111]

Update:

My lenovo has a poor implementation of a SSHDD.  I'm using the workaround which forces the drive to stay awake.  As noted, that does seem to help.  Reading some other threads in Microsoft Community, I decided to try and change my disk cache settings--what I was really after was to improve copy/paste, which seems to often cause the EN problem.  Where I was led was to change the disk cache settings, so I updated those.  I found a thread suggesting setting the "initial" size equal to RAM, and the max size to 1.5x RAM.  I have 8 GB RAM, so I set it to those figures.  After two days working it seems to have a very positive effect on the EN issue.  Not perfect, but my disk I/O isn't maxed out and generally is much lower in queue depth usage (that is what is shown in Task Manager).  

1) Caution: it takes a long time to start up from cold start or restart with these settings.  

2) I use Task Manager to monitor disk I/O so I can see when EN is stuck due to that.  If you watch the disk I/O during startup, it takes several minutes to drop down from 99%~100%, but once it does, the system is very stable.  I recommend being patient on startup.

3) It still seems that every now and then EN goes into not responding, but I think it is coming out of that faster.

4) As noted before, I turned off instant sync.  It was causing some issues (lag) or me.  I have not re-tested w/new cache settings.

5) I updated my delay of instant search to 501 ms otherwise it would get ahead of me and cause issues.  In the past, I disabled it altogether with a registry hack, but the latest (anniversary) Windows update killed that, but EN added the feature to change the delay in Tools-->Options-->Search

6) So, with all those caveats, here is the procedure I followed (see image for actual settings I used; yours may be different):

To increase the Virtual Memory perform the following.

1. Open Control Panel and select System. On the left side menu, click Advanced system settings.

2. Click the Advanced Tab. In the Performance section, click the Settings button.

3. Click the Advanced Tab again. In the Virtual Memory section click the Change button.

4. If the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives is selected, Remove the check mark from that option. In the Drive section, make sure that the C: Drive is selected.

5. Click the Custom Size option.

6. In the Initial size (MB) box enter the amount equal to the amount of RAM that is installed on the computer. In the Maximum size (MB) box enter the amount equal to 1.5 times the amount of RAM.

7. Click the Set button (important) and click OK.

Restart the computer for the new settings to take effect.

[eafpres 111]

Here is an update in my ongoing quest for better performance.  The changes I made before as noted above I think reduced the not responding due to 100% disk I/O.  Not eliminated.  EN seems to like it when I'm using it constantly.  If I leave it alone for a while, when I go back after a few operations it hangs on the disk I/O.  Usually once or twice, then pretty well behaved until the next time I ignore it for a while.

However, recently I have been seeing another type of not responding.  In the past I was so focused on the disk I/O I may have been missing this.  I sometimes get not responding without the 100% disk I/O in task manager.  Over the last few weeks I've been looking into that and found that, at least some of the time, it is related to when my memory (RAM) use nears 80%, EN just hangs.  It can take several minutes in some cases to come back.  So I've been looking at how to get my memory utilization down.  

I did the usual stuff like disable unwanted programs in startup, reduce the number of things I had open, etc.  Still I was often hitting the 80% level and having EN issues.  I run Chrome and as most know it uses a lot of memory, at least in Windows 10.  I have been trying an add in called The Great Suspender.  It is a configurable tool that takes Chrome tabs and "suspends" them.  It does bring the memory use down a lot, when I have lots of tabs open.  The trade off is they have to reload when you go back to them.  You can whitelist certain urls/domains to not suspend no matter what.  it is easy to use and has been working fine for me.  There is another add-in called One Tab which I may try.

However, this still was not a full solution.  I started looking into memory leaks etc., and there is a lot out there.  I tried various things with slightly incremental.  I won't list them here as none were really the solution.  However, I then made a registry change suggested by several sites.  That reduced my startup time and dropped memory use by over 20%.  Here it is:

• Hit Win Key + R
• Type in “Regedit” and then hit Enter.
• Go to ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management’
• Find ‘ClearPageFileAtShutDown’ and change its value to 1
• Restart the computer

I"m not clear what this does, but it has had a positive impact for me.  The net is my system is running better and I'm not seeing EN not responding type 2.  I'll update if I learn more.

 

[CalS 5,280]

How much memory in your machine? 

The other thing with Chrome, it just keeps eating CPU when it is simply open.  I'm typing this is Firefox and Chrome is still the top CPU user.  It is sitting at about 10% and is doing "nothing", just sitting there.  I always close it as soon as I am done.  Start up cost is worth it compared to the continual drain to me.  Does make one wonder why it is that way.

[eafpres 111]

1 hour ago, csihilling said:

How much memory in your machine? 

eafpres: 8 GB RAM

The other thing with Chrome, it just keeps eating CPU when it is simply open.  I'm typing this is Firefox and Chrome is still the top CPU user.  It is sitting at about 10% and is doing "nothing", just sitting there.  I always close it as soon as I am done.  Start up cost is worth it compared to the continual drain to me.  Does make one wonder why it is that way.

eafpres: I think sometimes Google's view of Chrome is it is for Chromebooks, which they think eventually could be a dominant OS.  For Windows, I don't think they care.  For me, the issue is add ins--I use a number of them and would prefer not to switch browsers.

 

[CalS 5,280]

Hmm. Well it would seem 8 GB would be sufficient (works well enough for me anyway).  Yeah, not in any way implying you shouldn't use Chrome, just an observation as to what a resource hog it can be, even when it isn't being used.  

[eafpres 111]

4 hours ago, csihilling said:

Hmm. Well it would seem 8 GB would be sufficient (works well enough for me anyway).  Yeah, not in any way implying you shouldn't use Chrome, just an observation as to what a resource hog it can be, even when it isn't being used.  

Yeah, but I'm really stubborn.

[eafpres 111]

Managing memory has become part of my routine.  As noted before, the Chrome add-in "The Great Suspender" has been a huge help, along with the registry edit.  I believe two things are causing memory leaks--(1) putting my laptop to sleep, and (2) Microsoft Office Software, especially Excel.  I can go almost a full day with memory < 50%, then I get into a few spreadsheets and maybe a PowerPoint or Word doc, and memory creeps up and doesn't fully come back after closing/exiting.  It is difficult to state a clear set of steps to repro.  But if memory use gets over 60% I see EN performance issues.  Net result is about 1 restart a day to get memory back.

[CalS 5,280]

Interesting.  Don't know  if it is worth it to you, but I use a tool named IOBit from Advanced System Care for PC clean up.  It has a performance monitor option which displays CPU usage and the like.  There is a one click option which releases memory.  It also expands to show what is using memory.  There may be better tools out there, but this is one I use.  FWIW.

   

[dwlloyd 8]

Keeping data down is not a useful response. I use Evernote to accommodate memory loss after a brain injury. I need all my notes. My records used to exceed 80,000, but a lot of them were lost when I had to rebuild the database. I'm now back up to 75,000+ records. 

I looked up this topic in the hope of finding recommendations on Windows service settings to change for faster responsiveness. I also hoped to find home router settings to prioritized certain ports and protocols and helper programs in order to prevent not responding errors.

"Not Responding" is inexcusable. I used to be a programmer working with very large databases, and it is not difficult to replicate only those records that have changed. It is not difficult to coordinate updates from multiple workstations by flagging a server copy of a record, or even a server copy of a specific field in a record, to mark that field not available for editing (by changing the background color of the field) It only takes sending a few numbers back and forth, which is no issue at all, to prevent any situation in which replication of data between multiple workstations would cause a program to fail to respond. Especially given the fact that database size is related to this issue, it is obvious data is not being replicated intelligently. It appears large blocks of data are needlessly being replicated and re-replicated in order to cause a problem like this. 

My continual frustration is that when I have a few minutes to scan some mail, I don't have the opportunity to also write a note or add tags, because Evernote goes into a continual mode of "not responding" after the first edit, which I often have a dozen edits to do if I have any to do at all. Worse, with my disability, interrupting my ability to make edits effectively ensures those edits won't be made, reminders won't be set, and related records won't be properly tagged.

Data input must be optimized and searches must be optimized. The way to do that is to eliminate blind updates of large data blocks, replacing them with short packets with record number, field number, time and location information that enables multiple workstations to coordinate updates, and allows continual replication of only those portions of records that are changed to the central repository. It should not take any longer to update a single record in a 100-record database than it takes to update a single record in a 100K-record database. It should never take longer to update a record that has 2 clients attached than it takes to update a record that has 20 clients attached because each client should be handling only its own update needs based on a shared replication table.
 

 

[eafpres 111]

I have been running the latest beta: 6.6.3.4452 (304452) Prerelease for a while now, and it is not any better.  I was excited because the release notes said they made some improvements for 32 bit systems, which sounded like they were attacking the issue, but I still get a fair amount of not responding, mainly due to disk I/O max out, but sometimes just not responding.  Seems similar to before; if I'm not in EN (BTW--I'm Windows 10 on Lenovo laptop) for a while, and jump in and edit something, then it works for a bit then suddenly locks up.  Also seems still sensitive to copy/paste and highight/delete.