Suddenly Notepad++ repeatedly crashing on opening >250MB FASTA files

Kausik Datta

It started happening this morning. The same files that I had opened until yesterday evening are crashing Notepad++ repeatedly. These are FASTA (plain text) files with protein sequence data. I haven’t changed or updated anything. Only four plugins seem to be installed (by default) - Converter, MIME Tools, NppExport and Plugin Manager. My computer is a Core i7 CPU with 16 GB RAM running 64bit Win10 Pro. Can someone please help with this issue? Thanks in advance.

dail

You’ll have to provide more info. What version are you using? When does it crash? Define “crash”…is there an error message? Do you have periodic backups enabled?

Kausik Datta

Thank you for answering, @dail. My apologies for the inadequate information. The version seems to be the latest, v.6.9.2.

By ‘crash’, I mean that the Windows Crash Dialog Box comes up, saying “This Program has stopped responding. Windows is checking. Close Program”.

Even if a file opens after I relaunch Notepad++ several times, it crashes again the moment I try to select all the text by pressing Control-A (necessary for a file wide operation - removal of blank lines).

I have no clue about the ‘periodic backups’ you mention, sorry. I don’t know why this is happening, especially since Notepad++ is apparently rated for ~2GB-sized files without any issue.

dail

I have no clue about the ‘periodic backups’ you mention, sorry

Make sure Settings > Preferences > Backup > Enable session snapshot and periodic backup is turned off. When working with large files this doesn’t play nice.

since Notepad++ is apparently rated for ~2GB-sized files without any issue.

This has never been the case. Depending on file syntax, etc I’ve never been able to open a file over 500MB.

Couple things to try:

Most likely you have your settings saved in the %APPDATA% directory, so delete (or temporarily move if you want to save them) any XML files which has your settings.
Disable your plugins. You can rename your plugins folder (probably in C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++) to something else and restart N++
Open the file and run View > Summary to see if that works, if so tell me the file length.

Kausik Datta

Thanks again, @dail. I have turned off the periodic backup, and also deleted the backup file I found in the backup folder in %AppData%.

I was mistaken about Notepad++'s file opening capabilities then. In any case, my files are FASTA/text files about 250MB in size. Since you have opened 500MB files, mine shouldn’t be any problem.

I moved the themes and plugins subfolders, as well as the XML files, from N++ AppData folder; I disabled the plugins by renaming the plugins folder. On opening the file (it opened this time), I ran the view summary. It took a little while (and I noticed it was using ~12.5% of the CPU to do so), but the summary box popped up. The file length is 273 651 070 bytes, which sounds about right.

However, the moment I tried to select all the text (in order to run the blank line removal operation), it crashed again. So, no joy! :(

dail

Since you have opened 500MB files, mine shouldn’t be any problem.

That isn’t a hard limit and there are other factors that play into this, but if the file is too large then you’ll immediately get a message when trying to open it that the file is too large.

Thanks for the info. I’ll try a few things but really don’t know anything else you can do other than possibly trying an older version of N++.

Kausik Datta

Thank you for trying to help, @dail. I really appreciate it. However, since my need was immediate (I have to use these files at work today), I searched on the internet and found another text editing program - which opened the file without any issue and also handled the blank line removal smoothly. I really liked the N++ interface, but sadly, I must move on.

Best regards to you.