trial version to slow "not responding"

[fred_f_42]

Installed the 2.6 trial version of Notation Composer on Vista. It operates too slowly to even play with. Simply switching between windows causes a 20 second delay in which nothing can be accessed. It displays "Not responding" in the title bar. Running the Wizard to create a new song takes about 15 seconds a screen.

After initial install, several errors about directories not being there. Found a KB article that walked us through creating the directories, but now operates too slowly.

Any ideas?

[Sherry C]

Hi,

I'm glad you found the KB article about the directories.

What is your system's memory and CPU speed? Running Vista, you'll need more memory than with other operating systems (1 Gb minimum) and the speed of the CPU will affect how fast any program runs, especially one that relies on video and audio such as Composer does.

You can try turning off any other programs that may be running in the background to free up memory and CPU resources. (On my old machine, any time I did any audio work I'd turn off everything else, even my printer stuff because it "pings" the system to see if there is anything for it to print.)

If you have minimal memory (512 Mb), then you can try upgrading the memory - it's one of the cheapest upgrades you can do for a computer. And it will make everything run faster :)

Let us know if the above suggestions help or not.

ttfn,
Sherry

[dj]

Hi, Sherry, Fred:

That sounds a lot like a conflict over a MIDI port.

Fred, is there any software running that might be grabbing a MIDI port? For instance, Maple MIDI virtual midi ports can't share -- if a second program tries to connect to it, the whole system comes to a grinding slowdown.

I've gone over from Maple MIDI to LoopBE for virtual ports on my new Win7 'umputer.

If you have a previous version of Composer (or any Notation software) on your computer, try deleting MidiDev.cfg from the Notation and Composer directories. Composer will then create a new one on startup.

Good luck.

David