Classy Calibre

[Sigh.]

I installed the latest version of Calibre after reading all of the great reviews, and I've had nothing but trouble. It runs, no ran slow. Painfully, insufferably and uselessly slow. In fact, I can't do much past loading the main screen before the UI completely locked up my system. Well after ~5 hours, 2 re-installations (same and older, 'more stable' version...0.7.17), 5 forced restarts, 1 windows failing to start (never seen before)

I've tried pretty much everything to try to get this working (disabling firewalls & antivirus, and every other 'fix' there has been to this problem)...But
every time a user reports this problem, the developer swiftly dismisses it as a user-end problem.

The program caused my CPU to run 100%, and ran my hard drive literally into the ground. After being fed up and putting my computer through hours of pain, for the 2nd and last time, I uninstalled and rebooted my computer. Except my computer would not boot to windows, or anything else for that matter.

If you're computer has an anti-virus program and shows the same symptoms of mine at the start - be very careful....Since this problem is known to Calibre, I'm not sure why they don't offer a warning or at least information to the user about it's lack of ability to deal with anti-virus programs.

This was the developer's rather unsurprising response (after reading similar blogs on this issue) to when I reported this bug...

It was my pleasure. I designed calibre specifically to destroy all your
data. In fact all these years I was just waiting for you to come along
and install calibre so that it destroyed all your data.


** Changed in: calibre
Status: New => Invalid

[morantis]

Which part did the manufacturer post?

[PeterT]

Sorry you feel that way; frankly thoughgt there are many many people using Calibre without these issues.

Frankly, your problem points far more to issues with YOUR computer than anything else.. either a flaky hard drive or an already corrupted system.

Its safe to say the majority of uses DO have Anti-Virus in palkce and have NO issues at all.

Please don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[JSWolf]

Calibre is not a trojan and does not have a virus.

Give your problems, I would have to guess that there is something wrong with your computer. I've run Calibre on three different computers and no problems at all.

The issue you've reported is not an issue. It's not a problem. In fact, if there is an antivirus interaction, it's the fault of the antivirus program.

As for Calibre running slow, have you tried running it with nothing else running?

What are your computer specifications? Have you made sure you don't have a virus causing the problems?

[Serpentine]

I don't see how a problem with an AV can be blamed on calibre.

However trying to blame a free an opensource project for it's lack of intensely use-case specific issue, without even mentioning the vendor directly, will help absolutely no one.

Considering you are also using a fresh username and no link to the supposed support ticket, there is no way to even check for previous posts on this topic; Not only cowardly, but once again completely unhelpful.

I hope that you have at the very least reported the issue to the AV vendor, as allowing it to thrash drives is not really an ideal behavior, and having compatibility with pretty ordinary desktop software is not a really good showing.

Lastly calibre running on a normal Windows install does not really have the low level access required to damage your partitions, however an AV does. Not even mentioning possible hardware issues — Where should the blame lie?

[JSWolf]

We have had people reporting false positives with Calibre. Also, some antivirus software such as Norton actually noticeably slow down the computer. So when you have a program like Norton with a program that can be doing disk intensive activities, there's no doubt you can get slow response from the program you are trying to run.

[PeterT]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1003708

[itimpi]

Sounds like Kovid is not feeling in a good mood today

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by itimpi

Sounds like Kovid is not feeling in a good mood today

Posts like this by people that have problems and then choose to blame everyone but themselves for their own problems have that effect on me.

@Sigh: The problem is local to your machine. That much is obvious to anyone with basic familiarity of how computers operate.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Sigh.

I installed the latest version of Calibre after reading all of the great reviews, and I've had nothing but trouble. It runs, no ran slow. Painfully, insufferably and uselessly slow. In fact, I can't do much past loading the main screen before the UI completely locked up my system. Well after ~5 hours, 2 re-installations (same and older, 'more stable' version...0.7.17), 5 forced restarts, 1 windows failing to start (never seen before)

What you describe has nothing to do with calibre and why you think a version of calibre 20 months out of date is "more stable" is a mystery.

Originally Posted by Sigh.

I've tried pretty much everything to try to get this working (disabling firewalls & antivirus, and every other 'fix' there has been to this problem)...But every time a user reports this problem, the developer swiftly dismisses it as a user-end problem.

There are literally millions of copies of calibre installed and calibre does not eat hard drives or destroy computers, so two or three dismissals seem appropriate to me.

Originally Posted by Sigh.

The program caused my CPU to run 100%, and ran my hard drive literally into the ground. After being fed up and putting my computer through hours of pain, for the 2nd and last time, I uninstalled and rebooted my computer. Except my computer would not boot to windows, or anything else for that matter.

If I were you I would troubleshoot my failing computer and not whine about some magical cause of its failure.

Originally Posted by Sigh.

If you're computer has an anti-virus program and shows the same symptoms of mine at the start - be very careful....Since this problem is known to Calibre, I'm not sure why they don't offer a warning or at least information to the user about it's lack of ability to deal with anti-virus programs.

This is not a know problem. Some folks find calibre slowed by anti-virus as their library gets bigger and are instructed not to actively scan the library. Others find that some conversions will seem to lock up their machine and are instructed to change job priority in calibre preferences from Normal to low to allow responsiveness during those conversions. But there are no problems with simply installing the program and certainly anyone experiencing problems as severe as yours has OS or hardware issues.

Originally Posted by Sigh.

This was the developer's rather unsurprising response (after reading similar blogs on this issue) to when I reported this bug...

It was my pleasure. I designed calibre specifically to destroy all your
data. In fact all these years I was just waiting for you to come along
and install calibre so that it destroyed all your data.

** Changed in: calibre
Status: New => Invalid

If your bug report was as uninformative and assuming as this post I'm surprised he was so obviously polite in his response. We don't always have the time or inclination to explain to the obviously over excited, ignorant individual why what they say has no basis in reality.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Sorry you feel that way; frankly thoughgt there are many many people using Calibre without these issues.

Frankly, your problem points far more to issues with YOUR computer than anything else.. either a flaky hard drive or an already corrupted system.

Its safe to say the majority of uses DO have Anti-Virus in palkce and have NO issues at all.

Please don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Installing Any new software on a Failing computer is Lunacy.

I have done literally a Dozen instals (Linux and Windows), hundreds of update and never had Calibre 'Destroy all my Data' (I have corrupted the Metadata.db once or twice (and used the built in recovery tools) )

So Millions of installs and daily users (stats here: http://status.calibre-ebook.com/ ) ,
I would agree with Kovids snarky response to your accusation.

100% CPU is not unusual for conversions and some upgrades that perform significant DB updates.
You went from 7.17 to 8.52 There were many DB structure changes... That all have to be completed (happens automatic if not killed) in sequence, then there was the creation of the backup of the books metadata in each folder. None of these are healthy 'System Killers'. They can (really) make the system sluggish until they complete.

FWIW most off-the-shelf computers can take 100% CPU 24/7 when on Mains power (Ask any BOINC contributor I have killed a few CPU Fans over time, changed out the Fan and good to go. BTW The Fan alarm shut the system down.)

By Killing a DB update, who knows what state it was in and if it wold be recoverable.
The Backup metadata was limited to doing a few per second to NOT kill your usability, not to protect the HD. This step can take HOURS (number of book dependent) to complete the first time and was built to resume if not completed.

[JSWolf]

Interesting.. I never did think of Calibre needing to update the database. And sure, killing the upgrade while the database is open and being written to is not a good idea at all. So some of these issue could be due to the size of the database along with the need to update it. And the OP maybe didn't give it enough time to do it's job.

[ilovejedd]

Sounds like a failing hard drive. Symptoms just happened to coincide with the Calibre update. The thing to do when something like the above happens is to pull the HDD from the system, slave it and create an image/backup while it's still possible to read from the drive. You certainly don't try to keep writing to it.

I have an Intel Atom 330-based PC (slower than later P4s) that handles a Calibre library with 3,000 titles just fine with Microsoft Security Essentials running in the background so I doubt Calibre is the culprit. It's possible that the Calibre update (and resulting metadata.db upgrade) brought the issue to the forefront but I reckon it would still have happened sooner or later.

The hard drive in your computer is in one of two states right now. It's either going to fail or it already failed.
-Chris Pirillo

[theducks]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Sounds like a failing hard drive. Symptoms just happened to coincide with the Calibre update. The thing to do when something like the above happens is to pull the HDD from the system, slave it and create an image/backup while it's still possible to read from the drive. You certainly don't try to keep writing to it.

I have an Intel Atom 330-based PC (slower than later P4s) that handles a Calibre library with 3,000 titles just fine with Microsoft Security Essentials running in the background so I doubt Calibre is the culprit. It's possible that the Calibre update (and resulting metadata.db upgrade) brought the issue to the forefront but I reckon it would still have happened sooner or later.

The fact the op manage to kill his system backs up the idea of hardware failure. They kept making a cardiac case run uphill in a misguided attempt at recovering.

Bulging Caps, clogged fan grills/fins are other common faults that bring systems down under load. some kill them dead if not resolved in a short period.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by theducks

The fact the op manage to kill his system backs up the idea of hardware failure. They kept making a cardiac case run uphill in a misguided attempt at recovering.

Unfortunately, very few computer users can recognize the difference between hardware failure, badly written software or a virus. Folks who aren't aware of the difference and don't know enough to properly diagnose tend to blame their computer woes on either a virus or whatever program they installed last on their systems.