Photoshop plug-in crashed Windows now no Adobe programs work

So I was working on a photo in Photoshop CS6 with the Nik Software Color Efex plug-in and when I went to load the photo back into Photoshop, the computer crashed going straight to the infamous evil blue screen (popped up for a quarter of a second so I had no chance of seeing what it said) and computer restarted. Started Photoshop back up and it crashes as soon as it fully loads. So for the past few hours I've been uninstalling/reinstall​ing Photoshop along with the Nik plug-in and deleting Adobe files associated with Photoshop. What I did find is that when the plug-in isn't installed Photoshop works or atleast did. I even still had CS5.1 on my computer and that doesn't work anymore.

Clearly there's something up with the plug-in from the crash. My issue now, is that now none of my Adobe software works. Before, Premier Pro, After Effects, etc still worked because they had no association with the plug-in but now nothing. I get these Adobe errors about an installation error even though they've been on my computer for months.

Anyone ever gone through this issue or know Windows enough to guide me to where this ***** ass problem could lay? I tried Googling it and found others having the same issue, but it doesn't look like anyone found an actual fix just bandaid fixes.

Is it windows Vista or 7? If so, go into system restore and run back to the nearest one prior to the crash. I would presume the blue screen corrupted an essential DLL file or something like that.

If you've never run a system restore, it is easy. Just click start, type system restore in the search box, click system restore and walk through the wizard picking a date.

Sorry should've stated that before, its Windows 7 Professional. Thanks for the tip tkbslc! Going to try that now.

Ok so went to do a system restore and only two points came up which are after the crash happened. I had a feeling it would be like this, because earlier today I was cleaning up the C: drive and I'm pretty sure one of the things I read to clean out was the old restore points. Of course not expecting a system crash, I figured it would be ok and I would have an updated restore point before anything were to happen but noooo not this time

Should I still go through with the system restore even though its after the crash? When I clicked on "Scan for affected programs", Color Efex 4 and Dfine 2 did come up under "Programs and drivers that will be deleted".

It can't hurt, but like you said, if it is after the crash it probably won't help. It won't take long if you have a faster system.

Murphy's law, right?


Just thinking, have you checked if there are any updates or patches to Color Efex or photoshop? Maybe there are slightly newer versions?

Did the restore and still the same thing as before I posted

Going to re-download everything which should give me the latest versions and hope something comes from it. Thank you for the help tkbslc much appreciated Could use any help right now.

No problem.

If it works before applying Nik Color Efex, then maybe it is time to contact their support. They might know some old files you need to clean up or something like that.

GOA510, look at the crash message. It should tell you which library (DLL file) is causing an issue. You can then do some googling to find out the root cause.

DiMAn0684 wrote in post #14979381
GOA510, look at the crash message. It should tell you which library (DLL file) is causing an issue. You can then do some googling to find out the root cause.

Would the crash message be the blue screen? If so, it only came up when it crashed and it was up for a quarter of a second. Which sucked cause then I could've seen what error it was and Google'd that Is there a way to search for crashes on Windows?

GOA510 wrote in post #14979428
Would the crash message be the blue screen? If so, it only came up when it crashed and it was up for a quarter of a second. Which sucked cause then I could've seen what error it was and Google'd that Is there a way to search for crashes on Windows?

I didn't realize you get blue screen every time. When a Windows app crashes you usually get a window similar to this:

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'text/plain'

Ohh ok. Yeah I only got the blue screen once, but I did get window like you posted when Photoshop would crash after. Dammit! I even saw the details but it never clicked to copy what the error message said. I do remember it was exact file locations that came up under "Problem Details".

Click on start and in the search window type "reliability" and then click on the "view reliability history" program. You can then click on each day and see major program failure, stop errors, etc.

Event viewer also has lots of log data, but it can be harder to sort through.

tkbslc wrote in post #14979980
Click on start and in the search window type "reliability" and then click on the "view reliability history" program. You can then click on each day and see major program failure, stop errors, etc.

Event viewer also has lots of log data, but it can be harder to sort through.

Awesome! Thank you so much! Was able to do that and the crash that started it all came back as this...

Which looks like to me that its the Nik Selective Tool which is what other people found out was causing the problem. I believe one person posted they were able to disable/delete the Selective Tool and it worked for them again. Ill have to try that again once everything is installed.

UPDATE:

Re-installed Photoshop off a fresh download and it ran perfectly fine as it should. Installed the Nik plug-in also off a new download and installed that, ran Photoshop and what do you know, crashed. I couldn't get an actual error report like the one above just an option to check for a solution, which didn't bring anything up. So I followed the faulting module path listed above and deleted the "Selective Tool" file (which was what someone said worked for them having the same issue in a Flickr discussion). I believe I restarted my computer just to make sure and wa-la, Photoshop and the plug-in are working perfectly fine. I even downloaded some of Nik's other plug-ins to see if they would cause the same issue and so far, nothing has come up and everything is working great.

Thank you again tkbslc & DiMAn0684, couldn't have done it without your help

GOA510 wrote in post #14981981
UPDATE:

So I ... deleted the "Selective Tool" file ... and wa-la, Photoshop and the plug-in are working perfectly fine.

It's 7/27/2014 and I'm having this same problem. Photoshop CS5 crashes at startup and I've isolated the problem to the SelectivePalette.8li file in the Nik plugins folder for Selective Tool.

However, deleting the file does not work for me. Here's why: SelectivePalette.8li is a process that applies - or saves - the Nik plugin effects to the image open in PS.

Deleting the file does allow me to start PS, and the Nik filters work ok. But, after applying a Nik effect and pressing OK to exit the nik plugin and apply the effect to the image open in PS does not work because SelectivePalette.8li is what does that. So the image open in PS is unchanged.

So I'm not understanding how deleting SelectivePalette.8li solves the problem. Is there any update to this?

(Running win 7 pro 64)