I tried to JGI this one, but I'm at a loss again!

Every time I go to replace an object with ctrl+F, the construction kit freezes for quite a number of seconds before displaying the search & replace dialogue. It's also not keeping object rotation after doing a replacement. The render view window will say "not responding" if I click it, and the CK in general will claim it is not responding if I click out to it. I have to wait for the search & replace dialogue to appear.

I'll admit that my hard drives are a bit slow compared to the rest of my system, but the CK is running off of two WD Caviar Black 1Tb drives in RAID-1, I have 8 gigs of RAM, and it's on a Core 2 Quad 9450 overclocked to 3.01 GHZ. My best educated guess is that there's some way to limit the scope of the search function to a certain area that I'm missing.

What do I need to do?

It's normal. It's simply a consequence of loading everything with an editor ID at once. The same happens if you filter "All" in the object window, you'll get the same pause.

Only way you can reduce it is with an SSD and a faster processor.

I'm slightly confused, as to my knowledge if it were indexing it should only lag once when it initially generates the list. Is there really no way to stop it from doing what it's doing each time I make it do a search?

I'd consider an SSD if I could have Steam keep Skyrim and the CK on the SSD with the OS, but I don't want to stick my entire game library on an SSD. But it's another excuse to get one.

While Steam is annoying and doesn't let you control the directory of a particular game, you can use symbolic links to silently redirect it to, say, an SSD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point

EDIT: actually it's this, I think:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link

TUTORIAL:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-664376.html

You two are making it really easy to spend some money! My gaming/art drives are modern, but my OS drive is a 250 gig from 2003 or 2004. I am really liking excuses to replace it with an SSD. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147164&Tpk=N82E16820147164&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-N82E16820147164-_-na-_-na&AID=10440897&PID=5682563


Just to triply check and to make sure the next person with this issue can find this on Google, using the find & replace function is causing the CK to pull up tons of small bits of non-contiguous information that make seek times the issue, not large chunks of information that would make bandwidth the problem?

Using Junction, the below as a batch file run from within a moved Skyrim directory will create all the necessary SymLinks for Skyrim from a default Steam installation to the new location:

• Download and install http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768. (Drop Junction.exe into into C:\Windows)
• Move (Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V) Skyrim to desired location. (Note: New location must be NTFS)
  
• Copypasta the below into a Skyrim Symlinks.txt (If WinXP(x86), remove instances of '(x86)')

  @Echo OffEcho Create Skyrim symbolic links?PauseMD "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Steam\SteamApps\Common"MD "%CD%\Link'd\%ComputerName%"MD "%CD%\Link'd\Saves"Move "%UserProfile%\Documents\My Games\Skyrim\Saves\*.*" "%CD%\Link'd\Saves"RD "%UserProfile%\Documents\My Games\Skyrim\Saves"Move "%UserProfile%\Documents\My Games\Skyrim\*.*" "%CD%\Link'd\%ComputerName%"RD "%UserProfile%\Documents\My Games\Skyrim"Move "%LocalAppData%\Skyrim\*.*" "%CD%\Link'd\%ComputerName%"RD "%LocalAppData%\Skyrim"Junction "%UserProfile%\Documents\My Games\Skyrim" "%CD%\Link'd\%ComputerName%"Junction "%LocalAppData%\Skyrim" "%CD%\Link'd\%ComputerName%"RD "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Steam\SteamApps\Common\Skyrim"Junction "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Steam\SteamApps\Common\Skyrim" "%CD%"Junction "%CD%\Link'd\%ComputerName%\Saves" "%CD%\Link'd\Saves"Pause@Echo On

• Rename Symlinks.txt to Skyrim SymLinks.bat
• Ensure Skyrim SymLinks.bat is in the Skyrim directory right next to TESV.exe etc.
• Double click the batch file (check for any errors before closing it)

Also, Skyrim can then be linked on multiple rigs while sharing the "Saves" folder and keeping separate config files in the created "%ComputerName%" folder(s). Been using a SymLinked Skyrim since 11-11 w/o any problems. With a Crucial C300 (SATAII), Ctrl+F in the Render Window pops in about 4-5 seconds.

I've got to get on here more often. You might have just seriously streamlined how I work my systems.

I run multiple systems at once and rely quite heavily on mapped network drives (Drive Z FTW). I usually keep track of things manually, so I'll often have files in quadruplicate. Last time I looked at symbolic links on Windows was when I ran Windows 2000 back in 2006, and remember dismissing it then for some reason. I might finally be able to free up some drive letters.

IIRC, SymLinks don't work for Network drives, unfortunately. If you manage to get it to work, let me know how?

The list is regenerated every time you open the Search/Replace dialog. A faster HDD isn't gonna help you out with the delay, as the items being added are already in-memory.

I woke up to my NAS/gateway throwing kernel panics, so I haven't had time to put last night's Googling to use, but (with each word being a separate link) http://superuser.com/questions/355214/how-can-i-create-a-directory-symbolic-link-on-windows-server-2003 http://comptb.cects.com/2268-overview-to-understanding-hard-links-junction-points-and-symbolic-links-in-windows http://superuser.com/questions/62587/mount-a-samba-share-and-create-symbolic-link I've found.


So it's regenerating it from stuff it has in memory? Why is it taking so long to do so and is there a way to force it to just generate the lists once? (Or, what purpose does it serve to regenerate the list every time and not just when different .esm/.esp files are loaded?)

I hopped on to my laptop last night to test the SSD theory out. It's a decked out Alienware m11x with a 240 gig SSD. The thing cold boots to desktop in <10 seconds including the time it takes for me to type in my password. I counted my desktop taking ~13-14 seconds to open up a search dialogue, the laptop took about 5. The laptop also has faster memory than my desktop, but when I do CPU benchmarks it's only 66% as fast, (At half the cores at half the clockspeed). So its single threaded performance is much higher than my desktop's as is its memory performance.

My geek curiosity is piqued. I'm tempted to undo my overclock on my desktop so I can test at DDR2-667 and DDR2-800 @ 2.66 GHZ then DDR2-800 @ 3.01 GHZ and see if RAM or CPU has a greater impact.

With Skyrim.esm loaded, we're talking about tens of thousands of strings being added to the combo boxes (plural, as there's more than one in the dialog). Making it a one-time operation won't be very useful as newly created objects will not be enumerated.

When a new object's created though, couldn't it set a flag that the list needed to be updated or is there something happening when there's an instantiation of the object?

(I really should have more experience before critiquing how it works, but I have fun with this type of stuff!)

Possible but ultimately not worth the effort given the other complexities of the editor.