Image Manager problem

UPDATE: solved, but not explained - see post #4

Image manager is so slow for me it's practically unusable... Something must have gone wrong with it somewhere, but I have no idea where...

I've tried setting the whole image folder and it's contents to 777 permissions - no difference.

I've deleted the image cache folder - no difference.

I've tried to search for the solution, but after hours reading other threads about image manager problems, I'm none the wiser... I can't find anyone else with the exact same problem...

I'm using OC 1.5.6.

When Image manager is loading thumbnails it completely freezes up the whole browsing session... I can't even load any pages in a new tab.

It does load eventually, but so slow it's unworkable...

UPDATE: I recorded this video of the problem: http://youtu.be/UzYIQY55h34 UPDATE AGAIN: I removed the video after the problem was fixed for security reasons.

It's a bit long and drawn out, because of the nature of the problem... and I opened the network monitor in chrome to try and work out what's going on, but I have no idea

Can anyone help me diagnose the problem here?

Many thanks.

I have no idea where to start in diagnosing this problem... It seems different from every other image manager problem threads I have read.

Can anyone help?

Bump!

I've updated the OP with a video of the problem.

http://youtu.be/UzYIQY55h34

Ok, after 2 days pulling my hair out I was able to get this fixed... I'll delete my youtube video now for security purposes.

A friend that knows php helped.. the issue was fixed by deleting/renaming the php.ini files in the root and /admin.

I guess those php.ini files are not needed?

I don't know what the exact problem was... neither did he...

Can anyone explain why this fixed it?

Bump

what is the purpose of the php.ini files, and will I have any future problems with them renamed/deleted? - why did deleting them fix this problem?

Bump does anyone know?

I think they are there to override potential "incorrect" server settings for situations where the host cannot or will not change them so they are suitable for Opencart...they have entries to turn off magic_quotes for instance.

As to why it worked to fix your image manager issue, not sure at all - if you renamed the files you could always have a look and compare them to the default Opencart ones to see if there is anything different?