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Thread: ArtRage 4 hangs when using stylus

  1. #1
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    ArtRage 4 hangs when using stylus

    I'm using ArtRage 4.0.6 on Windows 8.1 with my Surface Pro 2. Everything works relatively perfectly except when I try to use the stylus to interact with the UI in any fashion, except in cases of picking a tool or color.

    What happens is if I open a window like the preferences dialog, or tool settings, or even click "Check now" when asking whether to check for updates, if I use the stylus to do this, the application's CPU utilization will spike to close to 30% and the whole program will hang for several seconds. Eventually it will settle back to normal, but the action I made with the stylus may or may not be registered (not sure what criteria makes it register or not).

    I took a screenshot during one of these occurrences. In it you can see the program using 29% CPU time and Windows indicates it is "Not responding".
    Click image for larger version. 

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    What I did for this screenshot was open the tool settings dialog and then use my stylus to attempt to drag it somewhere else on the screen. The only things I can do with the stylus without the program hanging up is, as I said, selecting a tool or color, or drawing on the canvas.

    This is a relatively recent behavior, I believe. If I recall correctly, it only started up sometime within the past few versions.

    I don't experience this behavior anywhere else within Windows, so I think it is a bug with ArtRage. I've tried uninstalling and then reinstalling it but it made no difference.

    Has anyone else reported this behavior? Is there anything that I can do to fix it, or is it out of my hands and a bug in the program?
    Last edited by Pamiiruq; 02-04-2014 at 03:08 PM.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
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    Okay, this is probably a driver issue.

    Troubleshooting Step One:

    Go to
    > Edit
    > ArtRage Preferences
    > Input Device
    > Turn WinTab OFF and RealTime Stylus ON
    > Restart ArtRage and see what happens

    If this does not fix it, try turning off the Windows Ink option, You will find this in the driver set up under the Mapping tab, or the Calibration Tab, depending on driver version.

    If this does not help, come back and tell us or drop us an email at [email protected] (if it does fix it, tell us that too!)

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by HannahRage View Post
    Okay, this is probably a driver issue.

    Troubleshooting Step One:

    Go to
    > Edit
    > ArtRage Preferences
    > Input Device
    > Turn WinTab OFF and RealTime Stylus ON
    > Restart ArtRage and see what happens

    If this does not fix it, try turning off the Windows Ink option, You will find this in the driver set up under the Mapping tab, or the Calibration Tab, depending on driver version.

    If this does not help, come back and tell us or drop us an email at [email] (if it does fix it, tell us that too!)
    Disabling WinTab didn't fix it.

    Also, I don't see any options relating to Windows Ink. I looked through the Windows pen settings and even the stylus properties in the Device Manager but there weren't any options like that to change. Am I missing something?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    Sounds like a driver problem but it's interesting that turning off Wintab support didn't change it. Could you get in touch with us via [email protected] and we can go through some troubleshooting steps to see if we can find out why you're having this problem (we can't replicate it here).

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by MattRage View Post
    Sounds like a driver problem but it's interesting that turning off Wintab support didn't change it. Could you get in touch with us via [email] and we can go through some troubleshooting steps to see if we can find out why you're having this problem (we can't replicate it here).
    I sent an email. It is from the same account I registered with. Thanks!

  6. #6
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    Through some extended debugging on my end with Matt over email (they couldn't reproduce the issue on their end) we discovered that the hangs were related to my disabling "tab and hold to right-click" in Windows' Pen control panel:
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    I had it disabled, and for whatever reason this caused my hangs to occur. I did not disable it for finger input so I presume that's why it worked perfectly fine.

    I re-enabled the option and the problem went away. Matt said he'd make a note of it and investigate why this interacted with ArtRage as I described above. But at least I got it working again for the moment!

    Thanks for your help and patience!

  7. #7
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    I think we went through pretty much every troubleshooting permutation I know of before we hit on this. For anyone reading this who has similar problems with the sliders and other elements in floating panels 'hitching' during use this is an important option to know about.

    However - In one of our test cases (Win7, external Wacom tablet) we were able to replicate the hitching problem only with the Tap and Hold - Right Click option enabled, turning it off was required to solve the problem. In other words the exact opposite of the solution that worked here.

    There's something odd going on in the depths of Windows tablet handling that's causing the hitching and we're going to look in to it to see if we can find out why it's happening in the floating panels specifically.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Aug 2015
    Posts
    5
    Hi, FYI -- I was having exactly the same issue today in Windows 10 Home, Lenovo ThinkPad 10, ArtRage 4.5.4-64. And exactly the same fix helped me -- I had to enable the press and hold for right clicking here:

    <Win-X> > Control Panel > Pen and Touch > Press and hold > Settings > Enable press and hold for right-clicking

    Either the problem in ArtRage is still not fixed or Win10 resurrected it somehow. My tablet is upgraded to the latest version of everything.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2015
    Posts
    5
    So it's May 2016, ArtRage 4.5.10 -- and the issue is still there. Any plans or progress?

    I tried to disable Press and Hold to address the stroke delay: my strokes start a few millimeters past the point where I actually touch the screen. It's not the "lag" that the FAQ is talking about, it's an opposite thing. I couldn't find any information on that either.

    May be related: if I enable Press and Hold so that nothing hangs; grab e.g. the Canvas Positioner and move it around the screen it starts moving slower and slower, reducing to a couple of frames per second after moving it for 10 seconds. After 20 seconds the frame rate drops to below 1 FPS. Releasing the pen restores the frame rate. The same happens when I e.g. zoom using the Positioner. It zooms fine the first few seconds then starts to quickly slow down and becomes unusable.

  10. #10
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    This appears to be a driver issue, it's not something we can replicate locally with the press and hold / right click toggle adjusted. It might pay to check that ArtRage is set to Use RTS only and that you do not have any stray tablet drivers installed. There's definitely something external causing issues for a small number of people (actually, I think this is the first time we've heard of it happening in some time) so starting with a clean driver setup is probably the best first step. If that does not help, drop a mail to [email protected] and we'll see if we can work through and solve it for you.

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