Awful Lag with Powerpoint 2004 using multiple images

[Luke Olson]

I have encountered almost unbearable slowness with Powerpoint 2004
while working on my lighting design portfolio (which is the only
project I have on Powerpoint). It contains roughly 35 image slides,
which are approximately 2MB .jpgs, and 12 or so text slides. In
Powerpoint v.X, all actions were quick and responsive. Now, it takes
minutes to put the thumbnails on each slide in the Slide Sorter, and
while it does so, my entire computer bogs down to the point that I
have to wait when clicking a Finder window for it to become the active
window. Also, it runs the slide show very, very slowly, somtimes
taking as much as 30 seconds to change images.

I have a 17" PB G4, 1Ghz/1GB, and a 64MB Geforce4 MX video 'card'. I
have tried running this with no appliations running, and with AIM,
Safari, Entourage, Audion, as usual . I have tried it with and
without all the various devices I ordinarily plug-in. Office v.X has
been entirely removed. Apparently I forget to have it remove the
preferences the first time, but I have since remedied that with no
change in speed or responsiveness from Powerpoint.

None of the other Office 2004 applications exhibit any slow or
otherwise unseemly behavior, whether or not Powerpoint is running. In
general no other software, or device, seems to be affected by
Powerpoint's trouble.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Is additional information needed
in order to hypothesize?

Thank you kindly,

Luke Olson

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Luke,

Do you still have Office X installed?

-Jim

I have encountered almost unbearable slowness with Powerpoint 2004
while working on my lighting design portfolio (which is the only
project I have on Powerpoint). It contains roughly 35 image slides,
which are approximately 2MB .jpgs, and 12 or so text slides. In
Powerpoint v.X, all actions were quick and responsive. Now, it takes
minutes to put the thumbnails on each slide in the Slide Sorter, and
while it does so, my entire computer bogs down to the point that I
have to wait when clicking a Finder window for it to become the active
window. Also, it runs the slide show very, very slowly, somtimes
taking as much as 30 seconds to change images.

I have a 17" PB G4, 1Ghz/1GB, and a 64MB Geforce4 MX video 'card'. I
have tried running this with no appliations running, and with AIM,
Safari, Entourage, Audion, as usual . I have tried it with and
without all the various devices I ordinarily plug-in. Office v.X has
been entirely removed. Apparently I forget to have it remove the
preferences the first time, but I have since remedied that with no
change in speed or responsiveness from Powerpoint.

None of the other Office 2004 applications exhibit any slow or
otherwise unseemly behavior, whether or not Powerpoint is running. In
general no other software, or device, seems to be affected by
Powerpoint's trouble.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Is additional information needed
in order to hypothesize?

Thank you kindly,

Luke Olson

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info

 

[Luke Olson]

Jim,

Office v.X was removed at install time. I double-checked when this
problem came up, and it said there were Office X preferences; I
thought I had forgotten and told it to remove them. There was no
change in responsivness from Powerpoint. On a whim, I just now ran
Remove Office again, and it told me there were preferences for Office
X, though there are no Office X applications on the computer. It
seems likely to me that it's confusing X & 2004 preferences. Does
perhaps change the situation?

-Luke

Hi Luke,

Do you still have Office X installed?

-Jim

..

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

I'm kinda grasping at straws, but there are a couple things you could do.

First, try (with all office applications closed) deleting all the office
plist files and the "Microsoft" folder in the Preferences. Be sure to empty
the trash before restarting.

Another thing to check for is in the login items (jaguar) or user startup
items (panther) kill any microsoft daemons that are running, then restart
the computer.

I think you mentioned that you repaired permissions using Disk Utility. If
these steps don't help I've run out of suggestions.

-Jim
--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info

 

[Luke Olson]

Jim,

Thank for your suggestions. I did repair the permissions, and I did
dump all the .plist files and the Microsoft folder. I couldn't find
any user startup or related folder, only the Startup Items in
System>Library in which there were certainly no Microsoft related
itmes.

It did not make a difference. Can you tell me where to take this
next? Prefferably in a manner that won't play vampire to my wallet?

Thanks again for you time and suggestions.

Luke Olson

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi again Luke,

I've run out of tricks. If you want to send me a copy of the slow
presentation (you should be able to figure out my email address by sounding
it out) I'll try it on my relatively wimpy 500mhz tibook with only 4 megs of
video RAM.

If I get the same slowness, with your permission I can forward the
presentation to Microsoft for analysis.

-Jim

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Oh wait!

One other thought...

If you cut the presentation in half (make two separate files) then play each
half, does one half play fine and the other half go slowly? Maybe there's a
corrupt image or something. A process of elimination could narrow it down.

-Jim

Jim,

Thank for your suggestions. I did repair the permissions, and I did
dump all the .plist files and the Microsoft folder. I couldn't find
any user startup or related folder, only the Startup Items in
System>Library in which there were certainly no Microsoft related
itmes.

It did not make a difference. Can you tell me where to take this
next? Prefferably in a manner that won't play vampire to my wallet?

Thanks again for you time and suggestions.

Luke Olson

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info