Unable to Preview/Publish...

NOTES FOR TROUBLESHOOTING - PT. 2:

MAJOR UPDATE: I found something that directly affects the speed of publishing/previewing. AGAIN, the issue is not that I'm unable to preview/publish at all - just that at the rate it was taking, it would take whole days to publish a course, and up to an hour to preview a slide - if it would load. 

First, this morning I was able to get some slides to preview. However, this was inconsistent. Sometimes one slide would load after 5-10 minutes, even a blank slide. Though sometimes that same exact slide would take 20-30+ minutes to load before I'd cancel the preview. There wasn't much rhyme or reason.

So, how did I go from taking 5 - 30+ minutes to preview one blank slide to publishing an entire course to Review360 in 5 - 7 minutes?

I entirely disabled my antivirus.

I thought something was off with Storyline when it was using almost no resources on my computer. All the CPU, GPU, and Disk usage was <1%. The Articulate 360 Desktop App was using up more than Storyline 360 was publishing or developing a course. I could close the Articulate 360 Desktop App, and Storyline's usage would go up a bit, but it was still low. However... I noticed my antivirus was running a bit higher than usual. So, I disabled it.

Mind you, I disabled my antivirus halfway through previewing an entire course. It had been stalled at around 45% for 10 minutes, but as soon as I disabled my antivirus; 50%, 60%, 80% - BOOM - I'm previewing an entire course. So, I tried it again, this time with the antivirus off the entire time. It took about 5 minutes to preview the entire course. I tried it again, but with the antivirus back on. NOTHING. It loaded about 20 - 30% and stalled. I tried disabling my antivirus again and Storyline froze up. I canceled the preview, with my antivirus disabled, tried publishing the course. Now, I had tried earlier this morning, but it didn't even make it past the 20% mark for the first half hour - which is when I gave up. However, with the antivirus disabled, things were different.

About 7 minutes later the entire course is published.

I turned my antivirus back on, tried it again, and Storyline won't go past "Preparing to create slides..." and still gets caught at about 20 - 30% before it freezes.

I'm not sure if it's causation or correlation, but it seems like something might be there. I'm not sure if it's related, but the additional sub-processes come up under Storyline while publishing/previewing and I wonder if there's any conflict with the antivirus:

• CefSharp.BrowserSubprocess.exe (Additional processes come up during publishing/previewing)
• Console Window Host
• mediainfo-5.exe

It might be worth mentioning that I'm using McAfee Business Protection.