topic Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ? in Camera Software

Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

mangurian — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 01:49:22 GMT

I work extensively with my images and when I start DPP it usually takes a very long time before I stop getting a "busy" cursor. Once it is finished doing whatever it's doing (updating a database ?) everything works smoothly. I have one "working" directory for images. Is there any way to have DPP just look at where I work ?

Thanks

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

wq9nsc — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 02:31:59 GMT

When you say one directory, are you just putting your current working files in it or do you keep previous files in it also?

For DPP, if you don't set a default directory then it will go to the last directory used. I have a "dummy" directory that DPP is set to use with 1 file in it as a placeholder so it doesn't waste any time and I set this as the directory to always use at start. Then I direct it where I want it.

Then my current working files are on one of the "Z drives" in my HP workstation, the Z drive is a SSD directly on the processor bus so it provides the best performance. But the only files in that directory are the current files, all previous files get archived to 8 terabyte external drives for storage. The exception is files that are from within the last two weeks stay on fast SSD drives but on the regular Thunderbolt bus so access isn't quite as fast as the Z drive but it gives me easy access to very recent files that I sometimes need to update a just completed event.

With this setup, DPP is ready to go within 5 seconds after I launch the app (I just checked it).

Hope this helps!

Rodger

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

March411 — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 13:18:16 GMT

Open DPP and hit Ctrl+K to open preferences....

Go to Tools, at the bottom of the drop down choose preferences. The first tab is general settings, the top selection is the startup folder, select specified folder and set it to an empty directory. Once DPP opens you point it to the directory you want to work out of without waiting for everything on the drive to load. My music folder is empty (loaded on an external drive), that's loads DPP in seconds.

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

samarak — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:11:17 GMT

Sorry, but that doesn't work. I've had this problem for years and the first thing I tried was pointing DPP at an empty or nearly empty folder. Sometimes it seemed to help, sometimes now.

Today it was so bad I downloaded ProcMon, a utility from Windows, that can show what system calls an app is making, and filtered out everything but DPP. Even though DPP was started in a folder that has only 32 items in it, it is scanning files all over my hard drive. It's scanning CAB files from an orchid database, which of course have thousands of images in them, but I have never ever pointed it at those files, nor do I want it to scan anything but the immediate startup directory. This is really poor design. How do I make it stop?

Thanks, all.

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

March411 — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:05:14 GMT

@samarak sorry it's not working out for you but I would suggest that it is PC related and not the DPP software itself. I have it set up on several computers as outlined and the hit rate for opening the correct directory is 100%. I'm not trying to be argumentative or say that you are not experiences challenges but it has worked perfectly for me across several computer for many years.

If you are running windows Have you cleaned up old temp and prefetch files?

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

Waddizzle — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:39:50 GMT

I agree with March411. I point DPP startup setting to an empty folder on my C drive. When you edit files, you need to create a working folder that contains a limited number of files.

Do not use DPP to browse a large folder structure containing hundreds or thousands of files. Hope this helps.

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

samarak — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:52:34 GMT

Thanks for the reply, but that's not the problem. I have DPP pointed to a startup folder which has only 32 items in it. I have never ever pointed it at the files it is currently reading (I can see what file it's reading in ProcMon). Never. It's scanning files that it should never look it, that it shouldn't even know exist. Even when I kill the DPP processes and restart it, it picks up scanning those files. How do I stop it?

Thanks,

Steve

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

samarak — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 18:58:48 GMT

Hi Mark, thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately, I also have DPP on several computers, from different makers (only thing in common is Intel), running both Windows 10 and Windows 11 at current service levels for both OSes. Both experience the same problem. I also had the problem on older systems.

Remember also that I'm running ProcMon, so I can see the system calls - I can see DPP reading files it shouldn't be, in directories to which it has never ever been pointed. As a software professional myself, it's pretty hard to see how that could be system related - it's gotta be in the design of DPP itself. If there's a switch somewhere to turn it off, I've never been able to find it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Steve

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

samarak — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:07:24 GMT

Marc (sorry I misspelled your name), I'm going to attempt to paste in a screen shot from ProcMon.

Ok, can't paste directly. I'll try to attach an image.

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

Stephen — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:34:51 GMT

DPP is not randomly scanning folders because it wants to.

Have you checked the settings March411 suggested above? It will recursively scan whatever folder you have selected, and it will *also* look for every thumbnail in its cache, so you need to clear that, too, or it's just going to re-scan, so delete the temporary files. Another thing you can do is adjust the slider to make more or less temp space available - once it hits the limit it will flush the oldest ones.

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

samarak — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 20:10:35 GMT

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the response. Yes, I did look at Marc's suggested settings. As I mentioned, I have DPP pointed at a specific folder in which there are currently only 32 items. It has NEVER, and I'll repeat NEVER, been pointed at the folders it is currently scanning. Also please note that for some reason it's scanning CAB files, and while they can contain images (and in this case do), that's not a valid image extension and DPP should not scan a CAB file internally even if it encounters one. So I'd have to disagree - at least on my system(s), DPP does appear to be randomly scanning files. Believe me I would love to find that it's just some setting that I have wrong. This problem costs me a lot of time.

Deleting the cache and reducing temp space are suggestions I haven't seen before, and I'll try them. Thank you! But those are workarounds, and I still need a real fix.

Part of this problem is that when I kill and restart DPP, it starts scanning again and becomes unresponsive so quickly that I don't have a chance to open the menu and change settings. If the cache is the directory in Marc's earlier response (C:\Users\(userid)\AppData\Roaming\Canon_Inc_IC) there's less than 1MB in there. If that's not the cache, can someone tell me where it is? I haven't searched exhaustively, but I'm not seeing any likely candidates.

Thanks,

Steve

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

Stephen — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 20:13:05 GMT

Have you called support?

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

SignifDigits — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 20:28:55 GMT

If you do a reinstall and/or want to clear the search you'll need to remove DPP files and folders in:

C:\Program Files\Canon\
C:\Users\[YOURUSERNAMGOESEHERE]\AppData\Roaming\Canon. (this is a hidden folder to enable viewing hidden folders in File Explorer via the three dots..., then Options, then the View tab. You'll see it there)

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

samarak — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 20:50:34 GMT

Hi Stephen,

No, for two reasons. One is that I was hoping it's something stupid I did (though from the ProcMon output, that seems increasingly unlikely) and the community would have a quick fix. The other is urgency - I'm trying to get some award photos processed for the people who need them. Opening a support issue is, by design I'm sure, a time-intensive process, and if Canon support is like most, they'll ignore any evidence I have until they've made me go through hours of things I've either already tried or ruled out, assuming that I'm technically an idiot. I get why - I've BEEN software support and dealt with very non-technical people - but I don't have that kind of time today. Or most days.And even if I endure all that, they probably won't have a fix, and it could be weeks, months, or never before I get one - if they think it's worth fixing at all, since pointing at a specific directory seems to work for the rest of you.

But yes, that seems to be what needs to happen.

Steve

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

Jkarl — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 20:57:26 GMT

I just ran the same procmon test on my DPP and it did not scan everything on the HDD. The most reads were in the registry and the Program Files folder where DPP is installed and of course the SysWOW64 folder.. I do not have a solution other than what has already been suggested. BTW I am running on a windows platform. I did have to set up a start folder to keep my install from reading everything but once I did it stopped.

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

Waddizzle — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:31:36 GMT

“ . I did have to set up a start folder to keep my install from reading everything but once I did it stopped. “

Congrats! Setting up an empty startup folder really does work. But DPP looks environment variables to initialize itself.

By default, it will use the default folder for Windows Media Player, if that’s installed. If not, then it starts looking at folders in your “Documents” folder, and possibly other installed media apps.

Again, assigning a default folder to DPP seems to be the best solution.

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

Waddizzle — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:56:50 GMT

“ As I mentioned, I have DPP pointed at a specific folder in which there are currently only 32 items. “

Point it at an empty folder. A local folder, not a network folder. Create a seperate local “working” folder where you edit files.

Use that folder with 32 files as your working folder. Create another empty folder as your startup folder.

Never use DPP to browse a library of media files. If you have Media Player installed, then you might want to change its startup folder to the same empty folder used for DPP.

[EDIT] No sub-folders in the startup or working folders, either.

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

samarak — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:52:28 GMT

Thanks, Jkarl. That's what I'd expect. What ProcMon saw on my system was always similar to the image I posted earlier, only the particular CAB file within that directory changed. No writes, no other calls.

DPP was determined to keep scanning those CAB files. The only way I could make it stop long enough to talk to it was to move that directory elsewhere. Since it's never been pointed at that directory, ever (it was an install directory for another product), and since it shouldn't be looking into CAB files for images anyway, I'm calling this a serious DPP software bug. But at the moment it's behaving well enough to get the work done.

If anyone knows where DPP stores the information about what it was scanning when it crashed/was killed, I'd love to know, as I'm sure it will lose its mind again sometime. I did a quick registry scan for "Canon" and "DPP" but didn't see anything likely, and the directories in the roaming profile under AppData that Marc & Whiz mentioned earlier have almost nothing in them - less than 1MB.

Has anyone happened to test whether DPP will still run if you disable its permission to get directory change notification? I'm really tired of dealing with this issue.

Steve

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

March411 — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:52:32 GMT

Just spitballing here but have you thought about uninstalling DDP, creating an empty directory (I used music, I keep mine on an external drive) and reinstall the software.and then mapping the Specified folder to the newly created directory.

If you haven't tried it maybe it's worth a shot since it sounds like you've tried everything else.....

Re: Can I stop DPP from looking at all my images on 4 TB of internal SSD ?

samarak — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 04:54:02 GMT

Thanks for the response. By "Media Player"' I assume you mean the Canon product? But I don't have either the Canon or Windows Media Player installed, so shouldn't matter. And I never use DPP to browse any folder, except for the folders of still images with which I'm actually working at the moment, not even the repositories where I load images from my cameras. I browse those with other software, copy the images I select to a working directory (such as the one I was working with today), and process them there with DPP. I try never to give DPP a chance to get distracted by any images other than the ones I'm processing. And I never let a working directory get too big - not that it should matter.

As a software guy, I'm having real trouble seeing why it would matter to any properly written software whether I started it pointed at an empty directory and then switched to a directory with files in it, or just started in the working directory, so long as it didn't have hundreds or thousands of images. It's going to have to enumerate the files in the working directory at some point either way, and presumably establish file change notification for that directory in either case. But it's easy to try and I'm so tired of this issue, so why not? It's clear from the behavior I saw that there's a serious flaw in DPP's file system scanning code, but as I say I don't have the time (or the degree of masochism required) to pursue it with Canon support. A shame that software as powerful and useful as DPP has this bug.

Steve