Computer just keeps hanging. A fresh pair of eyes please

[aideym]

Hi,
I've have had no end of problems with my computer and had the motherboard replaced under warranty following the dedicated graphics card packing in whilst working on a picture in Artrage. So I have the laptop exactly as Dell want it. All drivers are updated, the bios is the latest one and everything is working as it should. It is a Dell XPS 9550 16gb ram, 512gb ssd, Nvidia GTX960m with 4gb and a 4k touchscreen. It is about as souped up as these things go.
I have a clean install of Windows 10, I have a fresh installation of Artrage5, I have a clean install of Wacom drivers for my Intuos Pro.

Onto my artwork. I set up a 40 x 30 cm 300 dpi for a landscape. It is currently on 11 layers and measures 110mb in file size.

The issue is that randomly but regularly the laptop freezes. As in nothing works. I can move the mouse / pen around and it notices but no clicks work, no keyboard strokes work, I can't TAB out to another window, I can't close the Artrage window. All I can do is press the OFF button until the machine closes down.

Any work is unsaved between the last save and the freeze but that is to be expected There is no crash recovery and there is no record of the crash or the unexpected shutdown in the Windows.

I saved my file as a PSD and loaded it into Corel Painter which I have a free trial on and it really doesn't like it, the graphics are clunky and then that crashes too, only it crashes in the expected way, with a nice message that it has crashed.

So am I right in thinking this is more an issue with this file? Is 110mb too big for Artrage? If it is I am surprised as this is my default size and DPI when working on my iPad in Procreate. Is it that there is something corrupt in the file that could do this?
If it is too big for my laptop, what sort of machine should I be looking for? Unless I'm doing something wrong I don't really want to modify the way I work to keep my machine happy as it should be the other way round.

Any thoughts or pointers that may work this one out?

regards
Aiden

[HannahRage]

If everything just stops responding then that sounds like it might be a memory issue. That file size isn't abnormal either.

Does this only happen in ArtRage or with ArtRage PSDs? (Can you make Corel crash doing something similar, for example, or only when you open the exported file?)

Are you doing anything specific with the tools when it freezes up? (E.g. blend layer, transform? Undo? Touch input?). Can you make it happen regularly?

If this pops up with other programs, you might have a RAM issue. If it's exclusive to ArtRage then we might need to take a look at the PSD files you are exporting, but a bit more data would be helpful, as it could also be a drivers related issue.

[aideym]

Thank you for the quick reply. I'll have to give it a go tomorrow to see what I can do. I'm not very well versed in Artrage or any non Procreate software at the moment. I was merely painting (oil ) each time it goes. I'll also start a fresh painting in Artrage and see what occurs. My original sketch was done in procreate and exported as a PSD to Artrage as I'm a lot more confident in line drawing on my tab. I'll report back presently.
regards

[nekomata]

this should not be happening... my typical painting filesize in artrage is between 100 and 500 MB, they transfer as .psds smoothly.
(I typically start with a sketch compiled in another app, and import that one to AR for the oil painting part of the work)

can you download fire alpaca and see it it gives you the same kind of crashes?
it's a freeware app that supports .psd import;
if it works fine maybe try saving over your procreate exported file and see if this crashes artrage again,
maybe there's some random data that procreate leaves embedded in their .psd files that doesn't play nice with either painter or artrage.


I can't think of any other reason for the instability otherwise, your laptop's specs shouldn't be the factor (Hannah might be v. right with the RAM suggestion though.)