Help!! PSCS2 acting strange - trying not to panic

[andyapc]

I have no idea what is going on, but all of a sudden my PSCS2 is acting WEIRD and I'm trying not to panic.

It's acting very slow and doing the following:

Sometimes when I open it up, it opens up weird - like sections of it open up at a time - my tool bar, my layers palette, etc... - they'll all open up at different times, totally white/blank boxes and then become normal after a little while (like maybe 20 seconds or so)

Several times in the past day, I've tried to use my text tool and I'll get this error message: "Could not use the type tool becuase of an error" and then, PSCS2 will just close all of a sudden, with no warning.

Sometimes when I try to open up a .psd file, instead of it opening up right away like it used to, now I get a window with a status thingy saying something like "reading photoshop format".

I've tried rebooting several times, but it hasn't helped.

What should I do? I have 1G of RAM and my hard drive is 226 GB of which 181 is FREE. What other info do I need to have?

Somebody please help! :( :confused:

EDITED TO ADD: Maybe this info is needed? I went under my Control Panel and for virtual memory, it says this: total paging size for all drives 1536 MB.

[Margie]

have you reinstalled ps? i'd save all your brushes, actions, etc in a separate folder (i keep mine separate anyway) and reinstall. not an answer as to why, but it may work...

[andyapc]

No, I've never had to re-install anything, so I don't know how!

Whenever I've downloaded an action, shape, filter, brush, etc., I've always saved them in their own separate folders in My Documents. Is that what you mean by "separate folder"?? But then again, way back when I started with PSCS2, I don't know if I ever saved anything directly into my PSCS2 Adobe folder. What do I do about that, if I have to reinstall?

Oh man, even the mention of "reinstall" makes me break out into a sweat. Is it hard? Will I lose anything?

[andyapc]

OK - I thoughg it might have something to do with my virtual memory and scratch disk (have very little to almost no knowledge about these 2 subjects).

my DH is defragmenting as we speak and we just updated our Norton program which is also scanning as we speak.

I opened PSCS2 and went under Edit>Preferences>Plugins & Scratch disks and beside First, there's a dropdown menu box. By default, it's saying "startup" and there are only 2 other choices in the dropdown menu: "C" & "J". Those are the only 2 hard drives that I have. "C" is a 226 GB (and there's 181 free) and "J" is my 186 GB EHD to which we back up my entire "C" drive every Sunday, so right now, it has 69.6 GB free (every week, I go and delete the oldest backup).

I confirmed with my DH that my virtual memory is 1536 MB.

1) Under Scratch Disk, what should I set "FIRST" to?

2) Should I manually go and increase my virtual memory and if so, to what?

3) Anything else I should do?

[Meryl]

I wish I could be of help here, but afraid I'm also clueless when it comes to the tech stuff - just want you to know thinking of you, and wishing you good luck :)

[BethyNixon]

Ok, from my DH.

He says you should put your scratch disk on a different disk than where your program is installed.

He says your virtual memory should be 1.5 times your installed memory. And according to that, he says you are fine.

According to my DH, it sounds like your space requirements are fine. He said something about resetting your preference files but you will lose stuff - I think just your personal settings for how you like things set-up, not the actual files. But he says that's a fix from on older version of PS.

I have NO idea if that helps you at all but it gives you a place to look. Keep us updated . . .

[andyapc]

Thanks Bethy.

Our defrag & norton scanning are finished and nothing "yucky" was found - in fact, the defrag found very little fragmentation (if that's the right terminology??)

So I opened up PSCS2 and it did load a bit faster. However, I just noticed something ... you know that box that show up when you open PSCS? The one that states your version of pscs and says it's scanning/building/initializing stuff (like actions & brushes & filters) and has tons of names listed? I just realized that every time I open up pscs2, the names are different - they're either in a different order or there's more or less of them. I mean, it goes so fast that I can't really count the names or anything but I can at least tell that the last 2 or 3 listed are different.

Is this normal and could it have anything to do with the problems I'm having? (can you tell I'm grasping at anything at this point?)

[Emma]

insert your disk and choose Uninstall from the wizard. Then do it again and choose Install. You can also choose reinstall, but if you do that try first with saving your preferences, then if that doesn't work try again w/o saving preferences.

You can also Add/Remove programs and just delete the entire Adobe CS 2 folder from your hard drive after uninstalling, just to catch any leftovers (only if you don't want to save preferences, last resort).

When this stuff happens, I do a fresh install. I can't remember if I am able to load a saved workspace from a file saved elsewhere, but check that before uninstalling to see if you need to copy that file first.

[Ted]

Andy, so sorry you're going through this! Hope it works out.

I, for one, am troubled with all the bugs that CS2 has... especially when I had the possessed Help file that would explode in 20 copies when I didn't want it!

It was ugly... I had to uninstall/reinstall! :(

Best of luck!

[andyapc]

well, so far, I think I'm OK. Didn't have to re-install (thankfully) but we ran the defrag thing and renewed our Norton thing and scanned our whole system (I guess that's how you put it) and so far, all is OK.

Crossing my fingers that it stays that way!

[kat_75]

You may also want to check your computer for spyware if it happens again. Sounds like maybe you had a bunch of stuff running in the background that you didnt know about. (Norton may have gotten rid of that, tho.)
Did you check the Adobe site for updates and patches? My PSPX was running similar to your problem--I downloaded 3 updates and havent had a problem since. :)

[dmrdm]

I have Adobe Classroom in a Book and for each lesson it tells you to start Adobe Photoshop and immediately hold down the Ctrl-Alt- in windows to restore the default preferences. That helps me from time to time, but I really don't have any real problems to speak of. Good luck.

[Lauren]

Just remember if you restore the default preferences any presets you have made and not saved will be gone !!- YOu have to remember to save those presets for later use - always wise thing to do right at the time of making but I doubt many of us do!!

[andyapc]

I'm not sure what that means, Lauren?

You mean if I make a brush, I need to save it in a brush set before closing out PS? I usually do that automatically, as I make a brush. Same thing if I make an action - I always save it in a set first.

Otherwise, if you didn't, wouldn't you lose anything you made simply by closing out PS?

[Lauren]

No you wont lose it when you close out PS - they reload when you next open PS unless you reset your preferences or replace your presets with another set or the default set - I will often make at least 80 or 100 presets each time I open PS - I dont save them all - some I would only ever use once - Its a good habit to save those new ones you make that you are likely to use again tho - as soon as you can - otherwise you could lose them!!