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My blender hangs very often for a minute on two. Sometimes it doesn't, in 90% cases it does. Typical places where it hangs are:

  • at startup, just after showing console window, before showing UI.
  • at file -> Open, before showing file / folders UI
  • at File -> Export -> FBX - before showing UI, it hangs while the menus is still visible

This makes it really annoying to work with. What could be the reason for the problem? I tried disconnecting the network, because I thought the network drives might confuse it, but this didn't change anything. My files are all on local drives.

I run on Windows 64-bit, hardware is a decent laptop with 16 GB RAM, but it seems the problem happens when nothing is really going on, what would require gears.

The console doesn't print anything new in these cases.

Arek
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4 Answers4

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I marked the first correct answer as accepted. This is indeed a problem with network drives. But it seems I found a workaround, so I post it here.

The workaround removes all network drives from Blender, so it doesn't hang while trying to access them. It will also kill the possibility to save / load files to network drives in Blender. I do not need this feature so this is fine for me.

Before you start with this, try running Blender as Administrator (right click on its shortcut and choose 'Run as administrator'. I heard it might remove network drives on some systems. It did not work for me however. Verify by going to File> Open in Blender and see if network drives are still there.

Steps which resolved this for me:

  1. Create a new user in Windows. I named it "Blender". Set administrative rights to it so it can access all the files and create a valid, strong password for it so nobody will login to the PC with it.
  2. Create a shortcut somewhere (ie. desktop) to start blender. It can be a copy of the blender shortcut which is in the start menu (Start -> find blender -> right click -> copy, then right click on desktop -> paste).

  3. Change the target of this shortcut, so it is not:

    C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe

    but instead:

    runas.exe /savecred /user:Blender "C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe"

    If your path to blender.exe is different, adjust accordingly. If you username is different than Blender, also change it.

  4. Now double clicking new shortcut will start Blender on this different user account. At first run it will ask for the password - enter the password set for the Blender user.

  5. Blender will start instantly, because this new user doesn't have any network drives mapped.

  6. If caring for look, you can change the icon for the shortcut, because now it doesn't look like anything Blender like. Just find 'Change Icon' button in shortcut properties, navigate to:

    C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe

    and set a proper icon.

  7. Blender is now like fresh install without user settings. You can copy your current settings by copying:

    C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.76\config\userpref.blend

    to

    C:\Users\Blender\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.76\config\userpref.blend

    This path might different on your system or different Blender version. Do the same with other files in this folder: 'bookmarks.txt' and 'recent-files.txt'. If you have more files there, consider them as well (I only had those).

Ray Mairlot
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Arek
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7

If I had to guess, from your description I would say it is Blender trying to access some unreachable location. Such behaviour seems to be connected to disk reading activity, like when opening or browsing for a file or location.

I've had a similar problem a while ago when I had a faulty DVD drive installed. I later came to find out that disconnecting it made blender behave again.

Is your hard drive health poor, or is it very full? Check if some other program is reading or writing heavily to the disk, or if you have a optical disk drive installed that may be causing access delays.

Are you connected to a network? If so check if you have any configured network drives or remote places Blender might be trying to access.

Try disconnecting all that and see if the delays still happens.

Duarte Farrajota Ramos
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  • @Arek said, "I tried disconnecting the network, because I thought the network drives might confuse it, but this didn't change anything." – dedwarmo Mar 22 '16 at 01:56
  • @dedwarmo: I did disconnect network before entirely, not network drives. This did not help. – Arek Mar 22 '16 at 10:37
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    I verified it has sth to do with network drives. If "My Computer" is opening instantly, Blender starts fine. But if it's showing a progress bar for a minute trying to figure out network states, so does start Blender. Is there any workaround other than removing network shares? I have some number of them, need them for work, and they point to locations which are only sometimes available (while on VPN or when some virtual machine is running) – Arek Mar 22 '16 at 10:38
  • Ok got it and posted as another answer. – Arek Mar 22 '16 at 11:32
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Duarte Farrajota Ramos is right with his answer. I find a similar behaviour when I had some network drives mapped at work, after only using standby came home where those aren't available any more and I want to open anything in Blender that uses a File Browser. It seems to wait for some timeouts. Disconnecting all network drives usually disables these time lags for me.

This has already been reported as a Bug, but has been archived and is now a ToDo:

Add timeout to file browser, so network which is hicking up does not annoy artists

Community
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Samoth
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  • Good to hear it is on the roadmap. Is there any workaround other than removing network shares? I have some number of them, need them for work, and they point to locations which are only sometimes available (while on VPN or when some virtual machine is running) – Arek Mar 22 '16 at 10:39
  • I think, adding this mentioned timeout would be a workaround only and the real problem is based in Windows so that Blender only get's some notification pretty late after some network timeouts and is just innocently waiting for them until being able to display or use the complete drive list. – Samoth Mar 22 '16 at 11:27
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    Ok got it and posted as another answer. – Arek Mar 22 '16 at 11:32
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I had a similar problem, and it turned out that, while I had no mapped network drives I still had some inaccessible network locations pinned in the Windows "Quick Access" menu. Here's a page from Microsoft on how to remove such items. After that, Blender starts in 5 seconds! yay!

mik01aj
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