Opus freezes in win 8.1

opus worked flawlessly in win 8, 64 bit. when i updated to win 8.1 it became unusable. constantly freezes forcing me to restart, when working it takes hours to open a folder (i had the patience to wait for 3 minutes to open a folder) - i have now cancelled explorer replacement. it doesn't seem to have leakage in memory or CPU usage (as shown in task manager). is it only me?
if i want to make a clean installation but keep the current setup, which files must I backup?

Just install Opus over the top of itself.

If you want to try a clean installation including a default config, use Settings -> Backup and Restore to backup your current config, then uninstall Opus (this will wipe your config), reboot, and reinstall Opus. You can then try things with the default config and later restore your config backup if you want to.

If you have any USB3 devices then Windows 8.1's problematic USB3 drivers are probably the issue. They've been causing system-wide problems for a lot of people with and without Opus.

...I would do a fresh install of 8.1 instead updating from 8.0 (as always recommended for all service-packs before), this may fix your problem. You can make a backup before with TrueImage or similar and restore if not.

My computer came with windows 8 prepaid - the disastrous update was free. I don't know how to find a (legal) win 8.1 without paying. What if I install dopus 32 bit, fresh? Will I have two parallel installations on the same PC to compare?

You can only install 32bit Opus on a 32bit version of Windows, and can't have two installs in parallel (any 2nd install would just replace the 1st one).

It's really unlikely to be due to the Opus installation or configuration, but if you want to rule them out then the steps I mentioned above should be quick to perform, and you can choose whether or not to keep your existing config and when to restore it from a backup if you wish to try with a fresh config.

The suggestions in Crash, exit or high CPU usage when viewing certain directories and General slowdown or instability investigation steps are also worth considering.

Yesterday I completely uninstalled Opus, including settings, in a 'destructive' way - I didn't leave anything in registry. I reinstalled and reset it from scratch. That solved most of the problems but created some 'minor' ones (meaning that they do not prevent Dopus from working, but they diminish functionality).

  1. Opus does not auto-start, meaning that I have no tray icon and no 'Directory Opus 10' process shown in the Task Manager. I checked user settings and the link is there in the start-up programs, with 'NOAUTOLISTER STARTUP' as I have set it form the program's preferences. I also checked the Startup tab in Task Manager and found 'Directory Opus 10' enabled. The only weird thing, as I recall from Win 8, is that the 'Startup Impact was 'High' and now it is 'Not measured'.
  2. Opus cannot start from the desktop (I get a message 'DOpusRT: Unable to launch Directory Opus from "C:\Program Files\GPSoftware\Directory Opus\dopus.exe"') although 'Directory Opus Helper Application' (i.e. DOpusRT) is running (checked from the Task Manager).
  3. Desktop Opus context menus (i.e. 'New Lister', 'Opus Preferences' etc.) do not work and the same happens with Opus items included in the Control Panel.
    Is there any cure to these problems? Has anybody come across them?
    One final remark, not having to do with Dopus: Somebody must spread the word that Windows 8.1 update is a disaster (even scrolling has become a problem) that came out of nowhere. I may have to format the HDD & reinstall Windows 8.
    Thanks!

That sounds like Opus hasn't been reinstalled properly, but it's hard to guess why it might not be starting. It could also be broken system components that Opus depends on, or security tools blocking Opus from running, or file permissioning errors, or many other things.

An upgrade is always a "disaster" (whether XP to SP1/2/3 or Win 7 to SP1 or Win 8 to 8.1) and imo you always lose the max. performance and/or stability, even when the upgrade was successful.

E.g. antivir and other apps weren't compatible from 7 to 8 and again incompatible from 8 to 8.1 - so there're lots of changes "behind the scene" which can cause wired behaviour on an upgrade. Make a clean install, DO definetely runs perfect on Win 8.1.

Hooray!! I've solved the problem after an effort that lasted almost 2 hours.

  1. I, again, unistalled the program (I used REVO to uninstall it completely, including settings).
  2. I ran three different registry cleaning programs to remove every trace, rebooting everytime.
  3. I ran regedit & searched everything possible name (from directory opus to dopus to gpsoftware etc.) completely erasing the respective keys (it's amazing how many leftovers can be found even after cleaning the registry by using every possible registry managing program from the web)
    Now everything came back to normal. If there is one piece of software I cannot live without, is dopus.
    By the way, I confess I tried four (4) other file managing programs thinking that dopus would no longer work and since windows file explorer is the worst piece of crap ever to see the light of day.
    My conclusion: With only 60% of its capacity active, dopus is 3 times (not 30% but 3X) better than anything else, and really indispensable.
    So, my apologies for bothering you and thanks for the response!
    One other thing: it seems that this is the way to solve issues with the rest of the problematically functioning software in Win 8.1 (except for the logitech mouse hesitant scrolling, that cannot be solved)

To be honest: The time you needed to solve this you could have installed Win 8.1 twice incl. apps :smiley: and would have a clean sys now - reg-cleaner are same crap as tuneup-tools, you'll find other problems soon!

Logitech mices should run well under Win, remove Setpoint if you don't need keys to be configured and/or maybe your dpi is set too high (depending on which model you use).

Over the years I've noticed a correlation between systems with inexplicable problems and people then using Revo Uninstaller and registry cleaners to try and fix them.

It's anecdotal, and I only see a biased sample that might not be representative, but I suspect that using tools like those is what actually causes problems like this a lot more often than it fixes them.

Tools to fix specific, known problems are good. Tools which claim they can magically understand what's wrong with a computer in general and make things better without specific knowledge of the things they are modifying aren't to be trusted, IMO.

(OTOH, I disagree with Sasa that Windows service pack updates are risky. I've always done a clean install when doing a major version, e.g. XP to Vista or Vista to Win7, but never for service packs. I've had one service pack update cause one machine to go wrong, out of dozens of times. Doing a clean install just for a service pack seems over the top to me. It's debatable whether 8.1 counts as a "service pack", of course, and 8.1 does seem to have caused a lot of problems for people that you would not expect from a service pack. Some people have found doing a clean install of 8.1 has worked better, so I'm not disputing that; I just don't think it was a requirement for any previous minor updates of Windows.)

As no registry cleaner can be 100% precise as to what it removes, they should be avoided.

Unfortunately, there are reports over on the Logitech self-support forum suggest that the 8.0 to 8.1 shift in Windows has broken some hardware.

Logitech must have had beta versions of Windows 8.1 for months and has now had a month or so since the official launch, but it still has not acknowledged, let alone fixed, the problems with its hardware.

Then again, when 8.0 came out, Logitech did launch an software update, only to be forced to pull it within days, if not hours, because it caused so many issues.

A few months ago I updated a customers PC with Win 7 to SP1, after that IE was broken (needed to be uninstalled to prev version, but updating again caused in same issue). Other sys' felt slower than before. But I didn't say, that SP's doesn't work, only lots of people recommend fresh install and for testing I also do upgrades.

@michaelkenward: If you don't need Setpoint mouse will run fine with generic built-in drivers. On 8.1 you can have probs on some games as MS changed the mouse-query.