Photoshop and problem motherboards?

MM
Posted By
Mick_Murphy
Nov 13, 2003
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I don’t know if anybody here can help but I’d be very grateful for any good suggestions.

I got a new computer two weeks ago which has taken to crashing sporadically (8 times in two weeks), just shutting down and restarting. The only thing the crashes have in common is that Photoshop has been running, first 6 and then CS since I upgraded last week. There are no warning signs or consistent use of any particular Photoshop operations before it goes, just bang. I’m just saving every few minutes which is not a real problem as the machine is so fast but it’s getting really annoying.

Running XP Home, with auto restart turned off. No indication of driver problems in the BSODs but I’ve got the latest drivers for everything. Machine is an Athlon 3000+ (400FSB) with 1G of 3200 RAM, ASUS A7V600 motherboard. Over the two weeks I’ve had the guy in the local shop where I bought it put in a new power supply and a mega heatsink for the processor (I first thought the processor might be getting too hot with Photoshop causing it to run at 100%). I’ve checked the memory and processor with a hardware checking utility and no problems were found.

Now I’m stumped and so is the guy in the shop, because the crashes are relatively infrequent and the machine is otherwise stable and very fast (CS runs really well). I notice in the Photoshop FAQ a post about certain motherboards, with ASUS getting a good mention, causing symptoms like I describe but these seem to refer to relatively old Pentium 3 boards. So I’m wondering if this could be the case for my system. I mentioned this to the guy in the shop but he seemed to think that these new boards should not behave like this. Changing the motherboard is a bit drastic I think so before I resort to this, can anyone offer any advice please?
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DM
dave_milbut
Nov 14, 2003
restarts under xp are a hardware problem or in very rare cases bios. becasue xp is process isolated, a faulty application cannot bring the os down. an app calling an instruction that touches on some defective hardware can. you’ve probably got a flakey mobo (since you say you’ve tested the ram and cpu, although i’m not sure i’d trust that, depending on the type of tests run)
CC
Chris_Cox
Nov 14, 2003
Checking the RAM with software won’t do any good. And most people don’t have access to hardware RAM testers that would do any good.

Try swapping out the RAM, after that the next most likely cause would be the motherboard, then the HD components.
MM
Mick_Murphy
Nov 14, 2003
Thanks for the advice guys. I used the same software diagnostic utility on my older machine which started crashing mysteriously very recently and it diagnosed a faulty memory stick. Since taking it out it has been running perfectly. That is why I assumed that the fact that it passed the RAM on the new machine suggested the RAM was ok.

Anyway I’ll see about swapping out the RAM first before doing anything more drastic. The main problem in diagnosing is the very sporadic nature of the problem. It ran for four days without a crash and then crashed twice last night.
S
SimRacer
Nov 17, 2003
wrote in message
I don’t know if anybody here can help but I’d be very grateful for any
good suggestions.
I got a new computer two weeks ago which has taken to crashing
sporadically (8 times in two weeks), just shutting down >and restarting. <SNIP>

You may be better able to troubleshoot the problem if you disable the restart on error that is causing the actual reboot. Maybe then you can get a BSOD or some other notice of the wayward app or process if it is not hardware related. I did it to mine right after I finished building my computer, but IIRC, it is located within the system setup that can be accessed by Alt-Double Clicking on My Computer.

While it certainly can be hardware related, given that you are using Home instead of Pro, it may very well be a software issue too. Video and sound card drivers (and sometimes mobo drivers) can cause this sort of problem too in my experience. You may also try to track down the Asus diags (if you don’t already have them) as I think they can help pinpoint whether or not it is a heat related issue. I use an Asus A8V7N Deluxe mobo (Nvidia chipset) with an AMD 2800+ CPU and a gig of fast RAM, running Win XP Pro and PS 7 with no problems. XP Home, IMHO, is the least stable of the XP releases.

Good luck.

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