Studio 13 lagging, freezing, throwing error message

Jan 09, 2014

We upgraded one of our computers that had Studio 09 with Studio 13. Whenever I work on modules (were created in 09 but converted to 13), I experience a variety of lagging and freezing problems, not to mention an error popping. I've wasted a lot of time waiting for the program to do what I needed it to do and constantly closing and reopening it.

Lagging

The lagging is occurring whenever I try to launch Engage or Quizmaker. Regardless of the method used -- desktop icon, opening Engage or Quizmaker file, or Edit Engage/Quizmaker button on embedded slide in PowerPoint -- it takes 2-3 minutes for either of the programs to launch.

Freezing

PowerPoint files constantly freeze, either for about 20 seconds or to the point that I have to force close the files and reopen them. Freezing always occurs after closing the Slide Properties window. It also happens often when I try to Preview a slide. In this case, PowerPoint goes completely black and then I get prompted that the program isn't responding. Edit to add: If I try to have two different module (PowerPoint) files open at the same time, as soon as I open the second one, both files immediately freeze for about 20 seconds.

Error

I regularly get the error message of "Could not find process window handle." This happens after clicking the Preview button, the Publish button, or the Slide Properties button. Sometimes I just have to click the button again in order to get it to work. Other times I have to click several times. And yet other times I have to close/reopen the program.

Never had any of these issues with 09 and we have a system that shouldn't have a problem handling Articulate program functions.

Computer specs

Dell Precision T1650

Windows 7 Professional, SP1, 64-bit

16 GB of RAM

Core i7 processor

PowerPoint 2010

4 Replies

Christine Hendrickson
Staff

over 10 years ago01/10/14 at 7:13 am (UTC)

Hi Tim,

Sorry to hear about the trouble - hopefully we'll be able to get everything running smoothly for you.

For the error you're seeing, do you happen to have a chart in your project? If so, please review the following information:

You may find that Articulate Presenter crashes when you're previewing or publishing a presentation that includes a chart. This is a known issue.

See this article for more information and a solution:

Articulate Presenter Crashes When a Course Includes a Chart

Hopefully that will help with the error you're seeing.

For that and the other issues, please try the troubleshooting steps outlined in the following article:

The Articulate Tab on the PowerPoint Ribbon Is Missing

(This should also resolve an unresponsive Articulate Ribbon)

Also, please make sure that you're working with local project files:

Work on your local drive (your C: drive). Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, including file corruption, loss of audio, and other unexpected behavior.
You should also make sure the directory path to your project files and your published output is less than 260 characters (for example C:\Articulate).
Avoid using special characters, accents or symbols in your file names (this includes spaces and underscores).

Additional information regarding "Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces" in Windows operating systems can be found in the following Microsoft article.

If that doesn't fix the problem, please try repairing Studio '13:

Articulate Support - How to Repair Articulate Studio '13

If you're still experiencing these issues, please try the following troubleshooting steps:

Unexpected or Erratic Behavior in Articulate Studio

Let me know if you try all of those suggestions and still have trouble.

Thanks!