In Windows 7 you can right click on the task bar and start the Task Manager. Select the tab Performance and press the "Resource Monitor..." button at the bottom of the window. The resource monitor gives you a very detailed view of the actual use of resources by the individual processes. That should help you to decide which resource is slowing your page loading down.

Earlier this year I had numerous inexplicable problems with my Desktop. I tried a number of useful tools.

HWiNFO32/64 hardware diagnostic tool

HWiNFO32 is a hardware information and diagnostic tool, that recognizes and displays detailed information about all your hardware components.

It organizes the components in a tree view, and provides easy to read reports for each item.
The program can also display detailed processor and hardware sensor information (if supported), run various benchmark test and generate a system report in HTML, XML or Text format.

Intel® Processor Diagnostic Tool

The purpose of the Intel® Processor Diagnostic Tool is to verify the functionality of an Intel® microprocessor. The diagnostic checks for brand identification, verifies the processor operating frequency, tests specific processor features, and performs a stress test on the processor.

I won't provide links, as obviously it is very easy to Google them.

In my case these intermittent problems went on for about eight weeks, all kinds of inexplicable symptoms. Then everything finally came to a head one week-end [which won't be your problem]. A very long, and expensive saga

It was caused by an ongoing, undetected problem with the electrical supply to my property. The eventual casualties were my Desktop [CPU/MB], and some ongoing damage to my Convection Microwave, and almost myself physically. Other appliances were unaffected. I won't bother trying to explain the technicalities, which I fully understand but would likely confuse others.

Anyway I found the above tools quite useful.

Thank you both, however, what I need is advice from someone who works with large html pages. My new pages are 1550kb. Would a laptop with 8GB RAM enable the pages to load significantly faster than the 6GB I currently use?

>My new pages are 1550kb.

Ouch! That might be your problem right there. Unless i'm mistaken, when you open a file in Dreamweaver it'll write backup or live files at the same time to enable going backwards in edits. That copy might be the problem. The flash drive might also have fragmented the file. Most flash drives are not usually fast, especially at writing. I'd suggest moving the file, which I assume you back up, to the hard drive, making sure the old file on the flash drive is actually deleted. Check the flash drive to ensure it's not fragmented. If you have to, move the page back and see if that resolves the problem.

Side note, keeping files that you work with on a flash drive is risky. They are not as reliable, and prone to failure at any stage, just like a hard drive. Write speed is pretty much always going to be slower than read speed.

advice from someone who works with large html pages. My new pages are 1550kb.

HTML and a browser work together so that even 1 gb ram machines can display such pages, however dreamweaver s NOT a browser .... editors work quite differently when displaying content.

Query: how much of that 1550kb page is actual CONTENT? are you counting pics and code?

Note: I do work with rather large CONTENT files which approach 32mb where the code is only 4% of that value. (Think manuals with very few pictures.)

its not your RAM, its your PROCESSOR...that thing is a snail.

Hi JRaD, that makes sense. I like to use the ultra thin laptops, what processor and speed should I be looking at? Tks.

In this order:

* Windows7
Unless you know how to tune this is the main culprit IMO. It's updated stuff you don't need, it's had 'compatibility' fixes loaded in preparation for Windows 10, it's had nag stuff loaded to try an coax you into upgrading to 10. If you have the time and understand the risk then try a full factory restore / reinstall and watch it fly ... until those pesky downgradable updates get their claws in

* Hard Disk
Clone onto an SSD and run from that. Forget the flash drive. They are just too slow. Use it for backups and transferring only. If the laptop can take it then certainly use an NVME M.2 drive. These are crazy fast.

* RAM
6gb for Win 7 is perfectly fine (if you have it tuned and all the crap and startup guff removed).

With that RAM you could even run a Ramdrive for doing all the processing but this would take away from O/S and cache ram so you need to weigh it up. I tend to use 4G for the O/S and have a 4G Ramdrive for processing data in the fastest medium possible.

Hi JRaD, that makes sense. I like to use the ultra thin laptops, what processor and speed should I be looking at? Tks.

what brand do you like? you wanna get a 2nd desktop system for work?

Frank....no one look at his system specs and that i7 is a TURD... 17watt part designed for battery life...not getting work done. His whole system is not built for work..ultra thin.. hes probably got a 5400rpm drive LOL

He needs to get work done not surf the web on battery for 24 hours.

I agree w/ tangor... it's Dreamweaver not you machine.

More RAM is always a good thing ... as long as budget and hardware expense can afford it. I come from old school coding (only "editor" I ever used other than NotePad or NotePad++ was Homesite). Not sure how much longer Dreamweaver will be useful for large content "pages" as that editor gobbles up vast amounts of ram just to provide edit, display, undo, multiple undo, graphics, in one environment that is not the actual environment (the Browser). Add comment to include the ugly code produced ... meaning bloated and redundant.

We use the tools we have/like, but we also have to realize the limitations of those tools. Spend the bucks for proper gear and editors and many of these problems will disappear.

Had to share similar thoughts to an old time coder still stuck on Front Page.

WYSIWYG editors are fine for the newbies, but utter horror for coders (but that is a different conversation!).

Thank you both, however, what I need is advice from someone who works with large html pages. My new pages are 1550kb. Would a laptop with 8GB RAM enable the pages to load significantly faster than the 6GB I currently use?

It's everything. I've worked with large pages, but in this case it's more about Dreamweaver. I won't comment on why so big because it's not the topic and perhaps you don't have a say or option on the content of such pages, so I will approach the tech aspects.

Check your markup, it should be minimal while the rest should be your content, unless your code is clean you might be having trouble due to non optimized markup, but hey you said you are scoring nice on all tests, ok, then avoid using your FLASH DRIVE, test and measure performance. Hard disk VS flash drives have very diff performance results for different tasks.

Again the markup. I had to use Dreamweaver years ago and some times... I still use it. The thing is there are some markup features that make the browser way slow, this is just about Dreamweaver and there is nothing you can do unless you find another way around, and I mean in favor of Dreamweaver (as your site loads fast according to your comment). Server side includes? yes, you can place server side includes to add up repetitive blocks like navigation etc. In Dreamweaver it will only be a line of text you can't see, but on the server it will be all put together.

It's been years since I moved to pure notepad style editing, no Dreamweaver. It's faster but it demands you manage lines of code and not WYSIWYG. And then moved to my own CMS, this means I rarely see or modify a page on a "web site page" basis, it's just code and the cms (just like any cms you can find) will put the pieces together.

Good luck.

Latest Dreamweaver has all sorts of problems. Have you tried loading same pages, same DW, on another computer with i.e. more RAM?
Also, how do you edit the pages? Is it "live" mode or something else. I use design mode.

Anyway, as for the hardware, your best bet is to open the same page(s) on another PC with more RAM and a higher processor. My PC is i7 1.9, 16GB of RAM (7 years old) and no such trouble. True... no pages of 1.5 MB either.

Cheers!

Thanks to all for the detailed replies. The collection here has been very helpful.

In the weeks since I asked this question, upgraded my cable service to increase the speed of up and download. From 25 mbps down/5 up to 100/35. While this has not eliminated the problems completely, much better.

I would love to read about WYSIWYG alternatives to Dreamweaver Cloud, will start a thread about that some other time. Meanwhile, if there are good discussions about those alternatives already in the boards here, I will follow those links with interest.

Several messages were cut out to new thread due to topic drift.
New thread at: webmaster_hardware/4846485.htm [webmasterworld.com]
Split by not2easy on Apr 27, 2017

[edited by: not2easy at 10:33 pm (utc) on Apr 27, 2017]
[edit reason] Cleanup [/edit]