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Author Topic: Large GeoTIFF hangs Windows Explorer [solved]  (Read 2630 times)

orellius

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Large GeoTIFF hangs Windows Explorer [solved]
« on: January 04, 2018, 08:06:24 PM »
Hello,

I've been having this issue for a couple years and never found a solution. I've scoured the interwebs on several occasions and did find a bunch of people having the same issues, with TIFF files, but all of them are old cases and only involve people on Windows Vista and Windows 7, for which Microsoft released a patch, but that does not affect Windows 10.

I'm certain some of you have seen this so I'm hopeful someone has a suggestion.

Agisoft Photoscan Professional + Windows 10 x64
HP Zbook 17 G2 | 32 GB RAM | Core i7 | SSD drive(s) | Quadro K5100M GPU

Large GeoTIFF files tend to hang/freeze Windows explorer. Like if you browse to a folder with TIFF images, just simply clicking your mouse (single click) to select the TIFF, it hangs Explorer, becomes unresponsive for quite a while. Trying to select a group of them with dragging a box around them, hangs explorer. Trying to drag them to another location, say to copy them somewhere else, hangs explorer, basically ANY interaction with it hangs explorer.

By "large" TIFF files I mean under 4 GB, I use the auto-split in Agisoft at the export stage and it breaks them down in to sections of varying sizes, typically 500 MB to 2 GB because Windows does not like greater than 4.5 GB TIFF. Well it seems to not like smaller ones either. These are orthomosaics from UAV mapping.

I'm actually thinking this is a main reason I have lag issues scrolling in/out in Global Mapper software, which I am currently evaluating before purchase. Loading these same TIFF images into that software provides a non-smooth experience when zooming in and out. Might be associated with how Windows is dealing with the files in the background. Internet research points to paging file settings (which I've tried), how Windows is allocating memory when interacting with the files. But all of this is relating to Windows Vista, and no patch or user cases I found of people discussing Windows 10.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!
« Last Edit: January 04, 2018, 09:43:29 PM by orellius »

chrisd

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Re: Large GeoTIFF hangs Windows Explorer
« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2018, 08:32:43 PM »
Perhaps Widows 10 is trying to build a thumbnail ... try disabling that as shown here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=disable+thubnail+images+windows+10&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1-ab

Or, you could set all your folders to display files with details only.

Sometimes I see preview images built for files even when files are set to display as details. I think this has to do with the application associated with the file extension. I think this might cause the same slowdown as thumbnails. Checking that app's preferences or perhaps disassociating the file extension with any application might work.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2018, 08:40:51 PM by chrisd »

orellius

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Re: Large GeoTIFF hangs Windows Explorer
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2018, 09:42:57 PM »
You sir, are the G.O.A.T.! Even though you did not solve the problem, you lead me right to it. I tried the thumbnail settings and that wasn't it. It made me think though, I had Windows Explorer set to have the "details pane" open, so on the right side you see a preview of items selected. Just simply touching a GeoTIFF freezes it. If i turn off details pane, I can do whatever the hell I want with them with no freezing.

As I mentioned this plagued me for years. For a while I had the issue. Then it went away for a while. Then it came back. Went away, came back, lol. It's because I had the details pane on for a time, then off, then on. haha

Cheers!  :D

« Last Edit: January 04, 2018, 09:46:18 PM by orellius »