Photoshop/PC hell ...... please help !!!

[AndyT]

Hi all

Hi all.

Having some problems, hoping someone can help.

About a year ago I started having issues with Adobe Bridge CS3.

When I wanted to browse a folder of images sometimes it would lock up and freeze the computer - the hard drive light would just stay on all of the time.
The problem got progressively worse - ie, it happened more frequently. The only way to get the PC working was to power off and then on
again - even ctrl + alt + del wouldn't bring up the task manager.

I was advised that there were probably bad sectors on the drive that I store my images on and that it needed replacing, which I did.
The issue was still there, but later extended to PSCS3 as well in that it would sometimes freeze when saving images or corrupt the PSD file such that it was un-readable.
I have windoze XP64 bit and program files only on my C drive, my images are stored on separate drives.
Next I replaced my C drive and did a fresh install of everything, the problem remained.
PS is the only resource intensive program I use and the only one which freezes the system.

Things that feeeze the system:

Opening Bridge and opening a folder with anything more than around 50 orf files.
Assigning keywords - If I go too quickly between keyword.
Changing the workspace in PS.
Saving a psd in PS (sometimes)

As of today I can only get Bridge to open, I cannot even browse any folders - it just locks up !

I have set up PS to use 70% of available memory.
The same version of PS on my laptop (a "lesser" machine), installed from the same disk works perfectly. And no, I am not using a pirated version.

System specs:

Intel P4 3.4 GHz
RAM - 4 Gb DDR2 667 MHz
Motherboard - Intel 975XBX
C Drive - WD Velociraptor 10000RPM 150Gb (Wnndows XP64 and program files only) - not used as a scratch disk
E Drive - Seagate 7200RPM, 500Gb, 220GB free space (photo's)
F Drive - Seagate 7200RPM, 160Gb, 6GB free space (secondary scratch disc)
G Drive - Seagate 7200RPM, 320Gb, 61Gb free space (Primary scratch disc)

Can anyone please advise/assist ?

 

[The Kraken]

Well, I am not, in any stretch of imagination, a computer geek, guru, expert or even an advanced user, but one of the first things I'd do would to go into the control panel, launch the internet settings and delete all of the temporary internet files and cookies that have been stored on the hard drive.

the K

 

[Doubler]

M A C I N T O S H Imac. Problem gone.

 

[bvanant]

Several things to try. First check that all of your olympus raw files are readable with either the olympus software or with lightroom. You can download the lightroom demo and play for 30 days. If the files are all OK (i suspect they won't be) then copy them to your C: drive temporarily and see if that is one of the issues. I don't like to use scratch disks with only a few gig available, if the space isn't contiguous it slows down quite a bit. If bridge works fine (I personally don't use bridge anymore, lightroom is far better) on the C: drive but not on your E: drive then you have to think about disk access issues. Let us know

 

[sylpha]

this is a long shot. are you running XP or Vista? i find on my laptop that vista is copying my files to where it wants to store them (as well as where I want to store them)and eating up disk space. periodically i have to have a deleting session to clear duplicated files. Photoshop needs a lot of space to work.

 

[AndyT]

I have reinstalled Win XP 64 on a new hard drive. There are no temp internet files or cookies to delete.

I have accessed the RAW files that are on my PC via my laptop over my home network and they work Ok.

On this brand new install of the OS and Bridge it still freezez the system. The problem starts when Bridge attempts to builkd thumbnails - it just locks up. This happens on a folder with only six RAW images in it. The hard drive that I store my images on is brand new, I bought it because I thought there were problems with disk access or bad sectors on my other drives - apparently not.

What really gets to me is that this setup worked perfectly for 8 months when I first installed PS, my laptop is still going fine.

 

[Larry C]

I suck at computers, but I have two computer geeks in the family and we've got them apart all the time. It sounds like a RAM problem. 4gb should be plenty, but there may be a problem with the RAM. You might try pulling it out of the slot and reinstalling it. Maybe there's a bad connection. Alternatively, you may have a bad RAM chip. The stuff has gotten ridiculously cheap these days (My wife paid $98/meg back when we had a 486/50---the POS computer was $2700!!!!) nowdays you can get 2gb chips on sale at Fry's or elsewhere for $25-$50.
I had similar problems when I first got PS. It wouldn't run, or took 10 minutes to open a file. I ended up buying a new computer over it.

 

[scubaren]

You can download Picasa free. It is my favorite program to download, view and e-mail photos. Maybe it will work better than what you are trying to use now. Just search Picasa and you will find it. Hope this helps.

 

[AndyT]

Thanks Larry but I ran two tests on the RAM, plus I removed them in pairs to see if that relieved the situation - no luck !!!

 

[Bubbletrubble]

I realize that you are having problems with both Adobe Bridge and Photoshop. It still might be helpful to tackle known issues with Adobe Bridge first...

Follow the recommendations for Adobe Bridge troubleshooting on the Adobe website:
Troubleshoot Adobe Bridge (Windows)

I would pay particular attention to Fix #8.

Let us know how it goes.