Did you have the Folder Tree enabled when this problem occurred ?
I ask because because I have a sneaky suspicion this might be the cause of the problem because it does some sort of background polling, and it's possible it gets into some sort of endless loop.
Nope, no folder tree.
I normally just have a dual lister with not trees.
[quote]
I too have found my PC grinding to a halt with Dir Opus 8. I watched the memory usage soar to over 250meg !!! I love this program but find it totally unusable given this level of resourse hogging.
Liket the other poor user, this happens after opening a folder with videos in it, typically XVID.
Maybe version 9 ...
robh.alt@gmail.com[/quote]
Disable the Movie plugin or install a better XviD codec and your problem should go away.
I disabled the video plugins in Dir Opus, but i still have the problem. In addition to the mentioned problem, even after i close the lister window, the problem persists...Dir Opus is using massive amounts of resources.
... and so i then try to exit Dir Opus completely... the disk drive still chatters away and DOPUS.exe takes a long time to close.
I dont know a "good" codec from a bad one, wish i did. All my movies play, which makes it a good codec to me.
I really want to use this program so i am open to all suggestions.
Can you use Filemon (www.sysinternals.com) to see what it's doing?
Cool 
My turn I'm having the memory problem but my CPU usage is fine.
Viewing a thumbnail view of a directory of JPEG images and MJPEG AVI movies with the viewer pane active.
In the background I have Trillian Basic 3.1, Trend Micro Internet Security 2005, OpenOffice.org pre-loader, Spybot S&D scanner (TeaTimer), PC Backup scheduler, Spyware Doctor scanner, Adobe Version Cue CS2 (disabled), TortoiseSVN cache, the VMWare services, Firefox (two tabs) and Thunderbird. Yes, I know I need to clean up some of the junk.
Yes, I've got several, but there's no difference with them disabled.
[quote]If you can actually reproduce this issue please grab a copy of FileMon
Run this then create the problem in Opus and tell us what you see in Filemon. Does Opus seem to be in some busy loop and continually trying to access various files, for example in the recycle bin or elsewhere?
[/quote]
Filemon is cool, I've not used it before.
...
I've got a directory of eighty files - mostly JPEGs with a few MJPEG-AVI, all of which came from our camera. I had the movie filter enabled and was going through the directory giving each file a description (stored in descript.ion files). My lister is full-size (1280x1024 screen with the taskbar on the left), 3x thumbnails (120x120) on the left and the viewer pane on the right taking up about half the screen width.
I scroll using the keys to each image then open the description popup. Within a short time of doing this the memory usage for DOpus has jumped to 236mb of RAM and 478mb of virtual memory, and with everything else on my system I'm almost out of RAM! I've got 512mb of physical RAM and 370mb-ish of virtual RAM total, and this is the first time I've gotten to over 800mb total usage without having Dreamweaver and some other stuff open.
One of the worst things is that even after closing the lister the memory stays where it is, I'll have to actually exit DOpus to get it to come down off the ceiling.
...
So I disable the movie filter and exit DOpus...
Back to a "low" 385mb of memory usage.
I start up DOpus fresh, by default it loads a toolbar docked to the bottom of the screen. Its using 18mb of RAM and 9.5mb of swap.
I open a new lister and I go back to the directory I was in by typing the location into the location bar. Upon reaching the directory it changes from details view to thumbnails view and maximize the window. The thumbnails are loaded from the disk cache and all is well. I don't have the viewer open yet, but it has only jumped to 25mb RAM and 15mb swap.
I enable the viewer, select a few pictures in turn to view them and the memory usage jumps to close to 50mb RAM depending on the picture then returns to 25mb RAM when there's no image. Selecting an AVI file gives a greyed out preview window and the RAM usage stays low.
I re-enabled the movie plugin and went to a similar directory that had a dozen JPEGs and a half-a-dozen MJPEG-AVIs. The thumbnails were again cached as I'd viewed it not ten minutes earlier. I simply movied around the thumbnail view with my keys and the memory usage jumped to 128mb RAM and 198mb swap - this was just making the viewer pane jump between different files. A bit more jumping around, including letting one 30sec file play right through, and now I'm to 10mb RAM and 330mb swap.
Yes.
I disabled this as a test but am experiencing the same memory problems. After exiting and re-loading the same directory, with a bit of jumping around I'm to 136mb of RAM and 285mb of swap.
After exiting and reloading the same directory, I set the view to Details mode. After jumping around for a few seconds it is to 102mb of RAM and 103mb swap. The following columns are being displayed:
filename, description, dimensions, type, size (kb), shooting time, created, modified, attr, size (mb)
I've compiled three logfiles from FileMon with all settings on (movie filter, Use-shell-image-extraction):
Anything else you want me to try?
So it sounds like playing movies in the viewer pane is what's eating the memory?
What happens if you play several of the movies in Windows Media Player, one after another, and don't close Media Player between each one. Does it eat a similar amount of memory?
Seems so.
Using Media Player Classic, I opened one file then kept dragging a whole bunch of other movie files onto the window to get them to start loading, it didn't bat an eyelid, stayed constant at about 10-20mb used. Sure seems like a Viewer Pane problem.
Damien
Media Player Classic is not the same as Windows Media Player.
Another bit of analysis.
After not using DOpus much for the past two days, I opened it up to the directory with the movie files & pictures. It loaded thumbnails for a few pictures but not most of them, then the memory load jumped to almost 100mb of each RAM and VM, then finally it displayed the rest of the thumbnails and the memory usage dropped to 28/22.
I finally check with WMP10 and it didn't exhibit the memory problems.
Let me know if there's anything else I should check.
Thanks.
Damien
Well it sounds like it is definitely the movie plugin having trouble with one of the codecs on your system. Either disable the movie plugin or work out which file is causing it, and identify the codec from that.
If there are a bunch of different files in the folder it could be tough to figure out which one (or several) of them is causing the problem. It's probably more than one anyway based on the amount of load the system is being subjected to... but you can try moving files OUT of the folder you're having the problems with one by one, checking each time what effect getting a file out of there has on the memory usage.
I wonder - since you have both movies AND pictures in there if there could be any collision going on between the movie plug-in and whatever part if generating the thumbnails for the pistures. If you leave the movie plug-in enabled and just move the video files out into a separate folder from the pictures do you still see the high mem usage also?
I love this software but I'm having similar problems with the CPU Maxing out! It's really frustrating. If I can't figure this out, everyone on my team will have to find an alternative.
Freshly formatted PC's running WinXP with more than enough power.
Only seems to happen in large folders. Especially folders with large graphics. As soon as anyone turns on Thumbnail view the CPU maxes out.
We have no plugins or codex or anything strange installed. Fresh WinXP and thats about it.
PLEASE HELP.
Opus comes with several Opus viewer plugins which can go wrong in certain situations (e.g. with certain files which confuse them or components which they dependon). Disabling Shell Image Extraction as well as the Movie plugin in Opus is a good first bet.
Following the steps in this FAQ entry is the way to find out what is going wrong:
[Crash, exit or high CPU when viewing certain directories)
Once you work out which file or plugin is causing the problem it can be looked at and hopefully fixed (and disabled in the meantime).
How large are we talking?
Greetings nudel,
Thanks for replying to my question.
I followed every step listed in the FAQ entry you gave, but unfortunatly saw no change.
I disabled every plugin I could find and still hit 100% CPU usage when browsing certain folders. After the CPU hits 100%, it stays there until I end the Opus process.
I tried isolating files/folders, and found no change.
Just to give you a little more background on the issue...
We are web/graphic designers. The folders in question contain images in all the usual formats, along with HTML docs and ZIP/RARs etc. Folders causing problems are around 2GB in size. I hope this helps.
We all LOVE Directory Opus, and everyone at our office is screaming in my ear to fix this issue. If I have to find another solution for the team, I'll be a very unpopular guy. This is my way of saying... 'we love you, but help' 
PS did I mention that the problem only occurs when I use 'Thumbnail' view.
Have you been able to recreate the problem in a directory with just a few files in it? If so could you zip the directory up and put it somewhere so it can be looked at?
Good news!
After 2 days of working on this issue, I finally figured it out.
When you sugested I zip up a directory for it to be looked at, that is exactly what I did. During that process, I found a single corrupt file!
Deleted it, and Bang! Fixed her right up.
I can't tell you how relieved I am.
Thank you so much for all you help/advice.
It's back to work for all of us. 
Cheers!
Have you been able to recreate the problem in a directory with just a few files in it? If so could you zip the directory up and put it somewhere so it can be looked at?[/quote]
It would be nice if you could make that file available so we can work out what the issue was...
I would love to, but it's a 105mb file.
Anyone feel like grabbin it?