I've lately been observing that Access and VBE hang for 5-10 minutes when opening a form in Design View. During this time, the application shows as not responding in Task Manager.
This does not occur if the VBE is closed when opening a form in Design View.
This does occur when:
The following have no effect:
The behavior is identical for bound and unbound forms.
Google doesn't have much on this. Any thoughts on why this might be occurring, how to debug it, or how to fix it would be most appreciated.
It turns out that the cause of the problem, however bizarre, is the specificaton of the system's default printer.
The freeze has been on a laptop the default printer of which had been configured to be the printer connected to my Samba / CUPS server at home, to which the laptop has not been connected when I have observed this behavior. Changing the system's default printer in the Control Panel to a local PDF print driver eliminated this freeze and other freezes I had been experiencing with other apps.
System or file corruption had nothing to do with this. I had ruled this out via various repair utilities of Windows (dism, sfc) and app installers.
I stumbled into this solution while investigating similar freezes with other apps, in a very brief post giving no explanation, in a lengthy thread otherwise clogged with pseudo-experts bloviating about system reinstallation.
No telling why the default printer spec would trigger this problem. Having discovered the solution, I googled "windows freeze default printer" to see whether this is understood. It seems, not. My impression is that print-related freezes have been observed for a decade or more, and no understanding yet exists about the cause or solution. Most or all of the advice is irresponsible recommendations of system overhaul or reinstallation, all of which likely are an utter waste of time.
Having the solution but no understanding of it, any insights I'm sure would be well received.