Photoshop Elements 2 Crash-Central!

[RickInHouston]

I know, I know- this isn't the place for this comment, but...

I've had my 10D for a week. I dove head first into Photoshop Elements 2 over that same week.

Scott Kelby's book is the BOMB! But (and this is a major big but), the program crashes constantly! My notebook is a year and a half old Athalon 4 1600 chip (which might be the problem, but why should it be...) and because of this I can't work on photos!

I'll go through all the Adobe, Compaq and Microsoft updates to correct it, but why?

Has anyone else found Photoshop Elements 2 so crash-prone?

Rick in Houston.

[Rob Larsen]

I ran Elements v1 for about a year on an Athlon 1800 & WinXP with no problems. I doubt the processor type is the issue. As a general health-checking step, you may want to try running a CheckDisk and Defrag on your drives. Also ensure your swap file is set to the correct size (2x amount of physical memory is good rule of thumb) and is on a partition with enough room for it to grow.

Another great book you may like is Photoshop Restoration & Retouching by Katrin Eismann. It sits right next to Kelby's book on my shelf.

Besides being very functional, Elements is a great training tool to learn Photoshop concepts if you desire to move on to it. Good luck getting your system stabilized.

[robertwgross]

Rick, this is not exactly the best forum to go after computer problems, but ... (just to get you started):

(1) Nobody can give good advice without knowing the exact OS you use, e.g. Windows XP Home with Service Pack 1A. State how much RAM is in the system. If it is a relatively small amount, then that might explain a few things. If you are running low on hard disk space, then that might explain a few more things.

(2) The term "crash" is not descriptive. If you say that you have only the one application program running, and then when you get to one specific step, it halts the machine, then that means something. If you get a blue screen with an error message, then for god's sake, right down the exact error message. If your keyboard just locks up, then that might mean something totally different.

(3) If the application program installation is possibly corrupt, then de-install it, restart the machine, and then re-install it from scratch using the original distribution CD-ROM.

---Bob Gross---

[RickInHouston]

Thanks, Rob--

BTW- I did go shopping today for the 'official' Adobe mamual to Elements 2. I'm starting to think it's not out, yet. Anyone seem to know? I'm reluctant to print it from the disc since it's quite a few pages.

Anyway, I'm wondering if this would be worth buying? I'll check out the book you mentioned. I also saw a book by ? Andrews. It seemed to be well written and was in color. Kinda wonder how you can put together a book on something about photography and it not be in color!

[RickInHouston]

Bob-

I've had it all- keyboard lockup, mouse freeze, the dreaded blue screen that went blank after a half-second and reboots.

It happens at different times. Moving sliders, flattening layers and simply saving my work.

I have XP and the latest service pack. I only run Elements by itself (though have had my wireless card in and will no longer do that). I am using less than half the available 30 gigs of hard drive space.

I'll un-install, reboot and re-install just in case.

Thanks for all the great advice. I've never had problems like this before. I'm usually pretty resourceful but this is getting to me.

Rick

[thomascanty]

RickInHouston wrote:
I've had it all- keyboard lockup, mouse freeze, the dreaded blue screen that went blank after a half-second and reboots.


Sometimes it can be the most seemingly unlikely issues causing problems. I run Windows 2000 SP3 and for a long time was getting errors left and right in Photoshop, and my computer would blue screen at least once a day. Then, about two months ago it died completely -- wouldn't turn on any more. The power supply had died. I replaced the power supply, the computer powered up just fine, and I haven't had a single error or blue screen since then. Bad memory can cause problems like that too, as well as any number of software or configuration problems.

I hope you're able to figure out what's causing your system to be unstable.

[scottbergerphoto]

I use Photoshop Elements 2.0 on a Dell 3 Ghz, running WindowsXP. No problems. Have you removed it and reinstalled it? Do you have an earlier version on your computer? If so remove it.
Scott

[MediaMagic]

RickInHouston wrote:
Bob-

I've had it all- keyboard lockup, mouse freeze, the dreaded blue screen that went blank after a half-second and reboots.

It happens at different times. Moving sliders, flattening layers and simply saving my work.

I have XP and the latest service pack. I only run Elements by itself (though have had my wireless card in and will no longer do that). I am using less than half the available 30 gigs of hard drive space.

I'll un-install, reboot and re-install just in case.

Thanks for all the great advice. I've never had problems like this before. I'm usually pretty resourceful but this is getting to me.

Rick

Hi Rick,

From what you describe, my first guesses would be in the following order.

1) Memory. A crash of a blue screen followed by a reboot is almost always a memory error. It could be a main board memory module, or the video memory, but a reboot is almost always caused by a memory failure. It could also be caused by the memory slot having voltage fluxuations, which would indicate the motherboard/video card/power supply which brings us to:

2) Power supply. If your power supply is going bad, the voltage may begin to fluxuate in any slot. So, this could be the video card slot, the main board memory slot, or even the CPU. The voltage flux will cause an instant reboot most of the time.

3) Driver compatibility issues. Considering your plethora of symptoms, this could also very well be the case. If you upgraded your video drivers, upgraded to WinXP from another OS, upgraded from one version of DirectX to another, there could be remnants of older versions lying in ambush. A driver or .dll incompatibility can give all sorts of strange behavior, namely the system hangs intermittently. Rarely though, will drivers cause reboots, but it can happen.

Good luck.
David

[John_T]

Graphics, particularly photo editing, requires a certain level of hardware/software. Could be your notebook was operating satisfactorily at it's design and intended task level, but with graphics you raised the tasks to the upper limits or beyond.

Besides RAM and software, your graphic card/chip/driver is the most likely culprit. Your camera is putting out 6MP and very high bit color. Just asking your notebook to display one pic can bring it to it's knees, not to mention toting it and doing something with it.

When you buy something like a 10D, it also good to plan and budget for its ramifications. From the sound of it, I don't think that notebook will hack it even if you feed it more protein.

[RickInHouston]

I just had a reply from the Adobe forum.

She says the Photoshop elements 2/Plug-ins/extensions folder is Pentium specific accelerators and can crash Athlon chips. She says others recommend renaming this folder. She hasn't had a crash since!

Hmmmm.

[John_T]

That's a good one. Still, I wouldn't use a notebook for anything but storing and viewing.