PowerPoint horrnedously slow on Vista

PDD

Hi Folks,

My uncle has a new Toshiba M300 with 2Gb RAM and Vista Home, he has created a very detailed Powerpoint Presentation (MSOffice 2007) that has lots of things that load when on a new slide e.g. sounds, graphics. When he puts the presentation in full-screen mode the presentation doesn't execute correctly as in the sound will be delayed or the slide in graphic is delayed. Is this a resource issue i.e. not enough RAM to run Vista & a big powerpoint presentation or is it a limiation of Powerpoint?

I know this isn't the best forum to ask this question but alot of googling has gotten me nowhere near a suggestion of what might be the problem so hoping somebody might be able to give me some feedback and perhaps point me in the right direction. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dave

Outkast_IRE

well 2gb of ram is the minimum i would reccomend for vista so it might be a resource issue all right the easiest way to check would be to create a new blank presentation and see if theres any delays when its going through blank slides.

mukki

try the steps in my sig

Biggins

Vista EATS RAM, Minimum you need really is 2 gig (and thats just for Vista) - not 1 as per what they say for Basic version.

Graphics eats up RAM too so if your combining the picts with Vista and trying to run both, the system is going to crawl.
Add sound to that and it going to make things even worse.
Imagine your trying to shove things into a tunnel (RAM). In order to get some stuff in, your going to have to kick/shove stuff out at the other end as the tunnel/RAM is only able to handle so much at the one time - thus you get a stopping and starting routine to some extent while the system tries to cope to do this...


You should also (if you know how, photoshop, etc) try to reduce the file resolution size of the bmp/jpegs in the presentation if possible.
It would mean you having to re-do the presentation again but for a slow, maybe clogged up Ram memory system, it can make a difference.

Overheal

It sounds like he needs to optimize his presentation: use JPEGs instead of BMPs, .wav files instead of full blown MP# or wma files if they arent needed. If youre using graphics, does the machine have a proper graphics solution, or is it on-board drivel?

While the presentation is running press CTRL+ALT+DEL and run the task manager. Go to the processes tab and take a look at how much CPU and Memory the office process is taking up. If it seems like an extraordinary amount: theres your answer. To give you a ballpark figure, my web browser usually takes up just 130,000kb (or ~130MB) of ram while operating. Your presentation should not be taking up much more than that if not much less.

thebman

Make sure you turn off vista themes and go with classic look if the system is low on resources.

There are plenty of other services you could turn off and tweaks to be made that might speed it up.

Could also try downloading Open Office and using the presentation on that but it may have compatibility issues with Office format (it supports it and will open it but it might not support all the features used in the presentation).

Worth a shot I'd say although maybe Open Office uses more ram than Office 2007, never compared the two.

Oh or you could plug in a memory stick and get ready boost support enabled on it which might help somewhat. When I had 2gigs on Vista, Crysis used to struggle but I used readyboost and was able to stabilise the framerate since my Crysis problems were memory related.

Capt'n Midnight

older versions of powerpoint could create standalone presentations, not sure if the latest one does

also look at powerpoint viewer ,


both options like running openoffice may run faster than powerpoint itself because they don't have to be ready to edit the presnetation

PDD

Hi Folks,

Many thanks for the great feedback it has certainly confirmed my inital suspicion that this was mostly caused by Vista being a complete resource hog. I will give those steps to optimizing Vista a go and try the ReadyBoost thing too. I would be interested to see how much of an effect that has, might be useful to tide him over till the RAM arrives.

I had suggested OpenOffice and he was hesitant about (having to get used to new software etc), I tried to open his presentation with it but it didnt open it correct so that blew it out of the water. I have two more Gb of RAM on order so hopefully that will solve the problem.

Regards,

Dave