PS CS: File Browser error – Abort with MS Compatibility Error

DP
Posted By
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 27, 2003
Views
1533
Replies
43
Status
Closed
Hello all,

After working this morning and thinking I’d nailed down the problems I’ve been having with PS CS as related to Norton products, I left for work somewhat happy that I was making progress. I also decided to leave PS CS up and running with the File Browser open so it could cache the images on my system.

Well, lo and behold, when I come home from work and walk into my study, there’s my PC smiling at me with a brand new error, but this time one that was trapped and reported by the Microsoft error reporting tool in WinXP. I hate that thing…thought I’d disabled it. It looks like this: <http://jazzdiver.com/photoshop/ps8/new_error.gif>

I browsed the tech details and noted where the file was saved, then cancelled out of the error report, whereupon PS CS then shut down. Come to find out, the text file of the error report is UTF-16 encoded and isn’t easily read in Notepad or Wordpad, the only 2 text file readers on my system at present.

So, three questions: Has anyone seen File Browser cause PS CS to abort for some reason and did you identify the cause? Also, does anyone know of a freely available text file reader that will parse UTF-16 encoded files into a normal text flow?

Oh yeah…a fourth question: I don’t see the PS CS system requirements specifying WinXP SP1, but as I’ve yet to install SP1 on this system rebuild, might that be why File Browser and PS CS are crapping out on me? That is, is SP1 actually needed?

Thanks,

Daryl

MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥

– in 4 materials (clay versions included)

– 12 scenes

– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups

– 6000 x 4500 px

DM
dave_milbut
Nov 27, 2003
isnt’ that error in xml? (yes iirc) copy and paste to notepad. save it as temp.xml and open it in internet explorer.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 27, 2003
Thanks Dave, but I guess it won’t matter….apparently all this troubleshooting into the late night hours is making me tired enough that I’m deleting some files inadvertently. I no longer have the error log, so I’ll have to wait and see if the problem arises again. Hopefully an SP1 update to WinXP will be a cure for whatever was wrong.

Daryl
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 27, 2003
Daryl, what problems have you observed with Norton and PSCS? Right now, I have a HW firewall and Zone Alarm running, but when I tried to install Norton anti-virus, it did two things that concerned me so I uninstalled it. One was the program informed me that there were no virus definitions installed, and when i went to update, the program said I have it running so don’t enable it again. (Catch 22). Also, with Norton installed, it took much longer to boot, and forever and a day to shut down.

The app is an older version Norton 2000, and I also uninstalled the firewall portion of the app.

Since using Norton in the past, I have never had an instance of any virus or worm show up, so I am not hugely concerned, but there is a first time, and if I cannot get updates or even a basic file what’s the use in it?!!
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 27, 2003
Hi Lawrence,

I’ve got some very lengthy postings elswhere that describe the problems I’ve had, which seemingly are due to having Norton SystemWorks installed but I still cannot say that with absolute certainty since the problem mentioned here has also arisen, yet without SystemWorks or Anti-Virus installed.

But, in brief: Repeated attempts to access Photoshop Help from the Help menu or via F1 will ultimately cause the program to abort without any warning. Or, sometimes, accessing PS Help seems to be working but then if I go and select Open or New, I’ll get a "Could not complete your request due to a program error". If neither of those problems arise first, I may get an "R6025 – Pure virtual function call" error. The end result is ultimately the same…PS CS aborts. Oddly, I can often use PS CS just fine but the randomness of the problems makes it scary to do any serious work in it and, at the very least, requires frequent saving of the file.

The following thread details most of my comments and feedback from others as related to the Norton products: "PS CS: Random Crashes Persist after Clean System Rebuild" 11/24/03 8:29pm </cgi-bin/webx?14/0>

REgards,

Daryl
MM
Mick_Murphy
Nov 27, 2003
Lawrence
Are you using XP. NAV versions earlier than 2002 are incompatible with XP.

Daryl – what are you going to do when you solve your problems? You’ll be totally bored.
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 27, 2003
I’m on W2K, Mick.

If Daryl is anything like me, PS will keep him occupied for life. On my deathbed, you will not hear me say: "I should have spent more time working on os and apps problems"! 😉
MM
Mick_Murphy
Nov 27, 2003
So much for that theory then Lawrence. Perhaps uninstalling ZOne Alarm and cleaning out all the Symantec folders plus the registry – then a clean install of NAV. I posted something yesterday to Daryl in another thread about how to do this.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 28, 2003
Hey Mick,

I’d welcome a bit of boredom right now if that meant PC CS was working reliably. I’ve even gotten distracted along the way and started working up a test action to try and collect some performance stats with from PS CS users. While I don’t have all that fast a system, PS7 ran relatively well for me on dual 450MHz P2 processors but I swapped up to 550MHz P3s so I could squeeze the last bit of oomph out of my motherboard and hopefully see decent peformance with PS CS. Well, as I exercised various filters on a moderate-sized 50MB file, PS CS simply seemed to crawl. I goofed apparently in not saving the action, thinking that any new actions built under an action set were automatically saved, yet the action wasn’t there the next time I loaded PS CS. So, I’ll revisit that again later and do a PS7 vs. PS CS comparison.

I’ve deleted all Symantec apps fully now, and have just returned home from Thanksgiving dinner with relatives, so I’ll be playing around some later to see where things stand with the problems I’ve seen. Right now, I’m suddenly seeing some problems with my mouse driver, as if things aren’t getting any better for me but rather worse. I’m still bouncing between two system images also, to see which serves me better. I wish the image I’m running now would give me error free results with PS CS because it is the one I built up last weekend that has more apps already installed. However, that fact alone introduces more areas to question as to the cause of my PS CS problems.

If I don’t make some good headway in resolving the issues I’ve seen, I may just have to give up for a while and return to using PS7 to get some editing completed before Christmas. I’ve got a sneaky feeling that the troubles I’ve seen aren’t in a rush to disappear, no matter how much I start feeling as if I’m onto a solution.

Daryl
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 28, 2003
Tough, Dayrl. I ran a difficult 16 bit file which required at leat seven adjustment layers and other tweaks before I dropped to 8 bit, and, except for a longer load time, (notice how long the load bar is at the bottom of the screen?), every thing seemed to work ok, so far. Maybe you need to go to W2K instead of PS7!! 😉

I’m running an 859 MHz Athlon processor on a Asus A7Pro with the VIA Apollo chipset, ancient by today’s standards, but carefully chosen at the time. I have no regrets so far. I think the problems of the week before were triggered by dirty conditions on the mobo. In fact, until I pulled the Ram sticks to run a test, I hadn’t realized that I missed some of the crud.

I will keep you all posted as I go along.

I love the way the system runs without the Norton anti-virus. Norton virus protection has never been invoked, in three years with this Security program although Security has stopped many of the stuff from even trying to infect the system. Now, I have a router between DSL and me, along with Zone Alarm, so I am running wiothout anti-virus so far.

Knock on wood!!!
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 28, 2003
Hey Lawrence,

Going back to Win2K is something I’d not do unless by way of dual boot. I’ve still got an old Win2K system image I could build from, but I much prefer the broader hardware compatibility of WinXP. Even with my system cleaned of Norton apps, I’m still seeing PSCS problems. A WinXP SP1 update is currently underway and I’m hoping that might help.

Be careful about not running an anti-virus app. I’ve never had a virus infect my system, but I have seen Norton Anti-Virus catch incoming viruses via e-amil…something your router and Zone Alarm won’t protect you from. But, a little wisdom to avoid messages that appear suspicious in any way without being opened will also curtail some problems. I may try out McAfee VirusScan and/or Trend Micro PC-Cillin. Recommendations for AVG Anti-Virus were offered to me, but the more I’ve read up on it, the less I feel it measures up as well in effectiveness. Still, some protection is better than none, and even AVG might be more than adequate in exchange for a bonuse of it not hogging resources as badly.

Regards,

Daryl
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 28, 2003
My email is USA.net, and they do at least a double scan for viruses in each email they forward. I have seen several emails in which a portion or all of the message has been removed with a note as to the infection found. I haven’t seen one for maybe a year, and I don’t know if it’s because they are not notifying any more or no infections.

Be that as it may, I am nervous about the lack of a virus program, so tomorrow, I’m going to check some out. Something other than Norton 2004, at least.
MM
Mick_Murphy
Nov 28, 2003
Hi Daryl – hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving. That is probably why it’s been quiet around here. I’m on the other side of the Atlantic by the way.

I’ve been running a few tests of relative speed of PS6 versus 8 (I never upgraded to 7) to see if there is any truth in these allegations about CS being slow. For most operations there is virtually no difference on my machines. 6 tends to be marginally faster for some things but only by a factor of .1 to .3. Both machines are pretty new and fast (2.4 Pentium laptop and Athlon 3000 each with 1 G of RAM) so people with older machines might find a greater difference.

The only operation I did where PS6 left CS behind was in multiple rotation of an image (something one doesn’t tend to do in real life I guess) and that was only on the Athlon. On the Pentium they were identical (and slower than the Athlon).

I think the only time I would see a significant difference is if I do something which runs me on to the scratch disk. Because CS seems to have a much heavier memory overburden, one is more likely to hit scratch sooner with the same operations in CS than in 6. I suspect that the minimum reasonable RAM specs for CS are 768 to 1G for anybody working with file sizes over about 20MB.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 28, 2003
Hi Mick,

Thanks, yes I did enjoy my Thanksgiving, putting all that good food at a priority over my PS CS battles. Now tackling the problem again today, I’m at a point where I’ve given up on rebuilding from what should be a clean system image with a relatively small installation of software, to going back fully to ground zero and reinstalling WinXP.

PSCS keeps teasing me…I’ll uninstall Norton this or that, clean up all debris left behind, and PS CS will look as if it is going to work better. But, if I persist long enough at opening/closing Photoshop Help or the Welcome Screen, then a failure of PS CS will occur eventually. So, all I know now to try is install only WinXP and PSCS, and see if they get along. If all appears well, then I’ll apply WinXP SP1 and all updates to see if PSCS is still happy. If so, then I’ll probably try installing all my smaller apps and utilities, then check PSCS again. Frankly, I hope to see PSCS is failing right from the start, so I’ll know that the problem is most likely with the software and not my system. At this point in time, I consider a hardware conflict extremely unlikely. If PSCS is failing right from the start, then I can save myself the burden of a reinstall and instead just restore a system image that is more mature.

If you’d like to see how PS7 compares to PSCS on my system, running through a test action I created some time ago, I’ve got an image of the performance graph at <http://jazzdiver.com/photoshop/ps7ps8.gif>

Off to battle….

Daryl
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 28, 2003
Daryl,

Where did you find the Norton trash? What are the left over Registry entries, how are they named etc.?
MM
Mick_Murphy
Nov 28, 2003
Daryl, I’ll have a look at that later.

Lawrence

Below are instructions for completely getting rid of Norton assuming that you have nothing else from Symantec you want to keep. I got this from the Symantec website a few months back but can’t remember exactly where.

—–

If the other solutions did not work, you must uninstall and then reinstall all Symantec software. Please Follow the instructions in the order shown.

1. Uninstall all Symantec products.
Follow the instructions for your operating system.

Windows 98
1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Add/Remove Programs.
3. Click Add/Remove Programs
4. Select a Symantec product, for example, Norton AntiVirus and then click Add\Remove.
5. Follow the prompts.
6. Repeat these steps until all Symantec products have been removed.

Windows Me/2000
1. Click Start, point to Settings, point to Control Panel, and then click Add/Remove Programs.
2. Click Change or Remove Programs.
3. Select a Symantec product, for example, Norton AntiVirus, and then click Remove.
4. Follow the prompts.
5. Repeat these steps until all Symantec products have been removed.

Windows XP
1. Click Start.
2. Click Control Panel.
3. Click Add or Remove Programs.
4. Click Change or Remove Programs.
5. Select a Symantec product, for example, Norton AntiVirus, and then click Change/Remove.
6. Follow the prompts.
7. Repeat these steps until all Symantec products have been removed.

2. Search for and delete all Symantec folders.
Follow the instructions for your operating system.
Windows 98/Me/2000
Because the Symantec folders are in different locations, it is easier to search for them.
1. Click Start, point to Find or Search, and click Files or Folders.
2. Make sure that "Look in" is set to (C:) and that Include subfolders is checked.
3. In the "Named" or "Search for…" box, type–or copy and paste–the following text:

Symantec

4. Click Find Now or Search Now.
5. Delete the folders that are displayed.
Windows XP
Because the Symantec folders are in different locations, it is easier to search for them.
1. Click Start.
2. Click Search.
3. Make sure that "Look in" is set to "All drives" or to (C:).
4. Make sure that "Search subfolders" is checked. (You may have to click the "Advanced Options" arrow to display this.)
5. Click All files and folders.
6. In the "All or part of the file name" box, type–or copy and paste–the following text:

Symantec

7. Click Search.
8. Delete the folders that are displayed.

3. Delete two registry keys
CAUTION: We strongly recommend that you back up the registry before you make any changes to it. Incorrect changes to the registry can result in permanent data loss or corrupted files. Modify only the keys that are specified. Read the document How to back up the Windows registry for instructions.
1. Click Start, and then click Run. The Run dialog box appears.
2. Type regedit and then click OK. The Registry Editor opens.
3. Navigate to and select the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec

4. Press Delete and click Yes to confirm.
5. Navigate to and select the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Symantec

6. Press Delete, and click Yes to confirm.
7. Click Registry, and then click Exit.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 28, 2003
Lawrence,

It looks like Mick’s got you covered with his reply. I’ll just add that in addition to the two areas mentioned, I found many others elsewhere. However, that was on a 2nd removal of NAV, and one which was performed by McAfee VirusScan when I installed a demo. So, I’m guessing it didn’t actually launch the NAV uninstaller and thus there was more trash left behind. The first time I uninstalled NAV, it was only the two entried Mick identified that I had to be concerned with. Regardless, I suggest you just run a search on "Symantec" in your registry to see what else it might come across.

Daryl
MM
Mick_Murphy
Nov 28, 2003
Daryl
I just had a look at your test results. Perhaps it’s just variation from one machine to another and also I am not using PS7 but PS6 (I doubt there would be much difference in anycase) but I am not seeing anything like those differences in performance. Two possible alternative explanations to performance differences:
1. I wonder could it be that running such a series of operations in a single action that you are going on to scratch disk with CS and not with 7.
2. I noticed when I ran a series of tests just now that PS6 is not updating the screen during a series of similar operations whereas CS is and this probably explains the marginal differences I observe between them.

Anyway I just tried out another series of tests, this time batch processing three to six files to make the times a bit longer and more easily measurable. I got very similar results to earlier with virtually no really significant difference except that PS6 can rotate images like it is being driven by a jet engine. If rotating images rapidly is what turns you on, then CS is not the champion. But I suspect much of this is due to PS6 not updating the screen between rotations. Incidentally, CS is about 20% faster at changing color modes.

Great fun. I used to do scientific research in a previous incarnation. Now I think I’m going to see how much faster Microsoft Access is at digging up gigantic queries on my new machine. See you later.
MM
Mick_Murphy
Nov 28, 2003
Daryl, I can discount both of the above theories having recorded an action similar to the one you did on a similar file size. I get about a 25% difference in speed between 6 and CS and this is all down to the Palette Knife and Extrude filters which wouldn’t worry me a lot anyway as I do pretty straight traditional photography.

Perhaps you should consider a hardware upgrade (you admitted somewhere you are an upgrade addict). A new mobo, processor and 1G of memory would only cost you say $300-400, not too much more than the price of the CS upgrade. My version of your action completed in 24s compared to your 3 minutes (not bleating, just suggesting you might solve some of your problems this way).
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 28, 2003
Mick,

As much as I’d like to upgrade, it’s a bit more of an expense for me since I’d also be replacing my drives. My current system is mostly SCSI, including the CD-ROM and one CDRW. So, rather than relegate so much of it to the trash pile, I figure I’ll leave it intact as a backup system for whatever purpose I find it useful. Then, I’ll throw away the P233 that currently fills that role…and is rarely turned on. I’d like to build a new system using current technology components and maybe it would last me another 5 years or so, with partial upgrades along the way as I’ve done with this one.

Today has been a bit frustrating…it seems some installation diskettes I’ve used in the past when installing the WinXP upgrade aren’t working too well…I’ve made little progress yet but have to put this aside for a while.

I rarely use the filters either by the way, as most of my work is also just photo editing. But, for testing purposes, a more intensive action like that is more apt to show differences between systems.

C’ya.
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 29, 2003
Does anyone have a handle on comarisons between McAfee and Norton virus scan? How does PS behave with McAfee?
DM
dave_milbut
Nov 29, 2003
I use mcaffee at work and hate it. it’s slow and intrusive. I’ve used nav at home since DOS.
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 29, 2003
It seems a general problem then, dave. I thought Norton slowed me down.

Maybe I need a computer just for the web. Now,warnings abound here concerning Norton 2004, so if I upgrade in Norton, I also may be hosed. So far, PSCS on W2K is just coasting along. It is slower than PS6. Even the scanner seems slower. It waits ans waits to do the final scan.
DM
dave_milbut
Nov 29, 2003
I don’t know about 2004. I already have a subscription, why should I pay for activation too. I don’t see the point as I always have the latest defs. and I’m very careful about what I download and what I do with what I download. (always scan first, even if it’s your mother sending you something!)
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 29, 2003
I have both NAV 2002 and 2003, the latter perhaps being unnecessary but I believe the reason I went with it was for both in and outbound e-mail scanning. But, NAV2004 isn’t a desirable upgrade from what I’ve seen how it impacts performance and the activation required. I think sticking to NAV 2003 with updates as needed will maintain excellent protection.
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 29, 2003
That’s why I need the virus scan. I can’t scan downloads.

I wonder if 2003 is still available.
DM
dave_milbut
Nov 29, 2003
but I believe the reason I went with it was for both in and outbound e-mail scanning.

2002 does outbound email scans.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 29, 2003
Lawrence,

I don’t know where you live, but I was in a Best Buy store here in Texas yesterday, and they have both 2003 and 2004 flavors of the Norton apps on their shelves. Oddly, they were the same price, when I’d have expected the 2003 versions to be discounted. But, rebates were available on both versions.

Dave…thanks, I guess I just forgot why I went to the 2003 NAV update. Maybe just update fever as I went for the full SystemWorks package.

Daryl
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 29, 2003
PS CS Problem Update: I’ve now installed WinXP cleanly…no restored image, but rather a fresh install from ground zero. With no other apps installed but PS CS, I opened PS Help and closed it 100 times with no problems until, ironically, that 100th time…and the error was the R6025 error. This time, it totally locked up Photoshop such that I couldn’t close it and a reboot was necessary. On a subsequent launch, no problems were observed and this left me to wonder if the R6025 error could be triggered by shutting down IE6 before a web page (PS Help) is fully loaded? I’d still not expect that to affect PS CS however, since IE6 is an external process.

I’ve now got all hardware drivers loaded plus PS7, and will test this a bit further before taking a break for a while.

Daryl
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 29, 2003
I found a 2003 version for 25 bucks and bought it. I could only find the complete Security package, but with 2000, you could uninstall just the firewall. Now, with 2003, only a complete uninstall seems possible even though you were asked specifically during install if you wanted the anti-virus. So, now I have Security and Zone Alarm, and I have disabled Security.

What a mess! 🙁
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 29, 2003
I can turn off the Personal firewall and intrusion detection in Norton, which remains that way even after reboot.

So, so I drop ZA or will they co-exist peacefully?
MM
Mick_Murphy
Nov 30, 2003
Daryl – you are on course for a serious repetitive strain injury. Perhaps you should try scripting. One time in a hundred ain’t too bad a bug. Maybe it would be even less in a real world situation. How about using the Acrobat version of Help. I actually prefer it.

Lawrence – why do you need ZA as well as Norton. I imagine you could be heading for some conflicts there. With a hardware firewall as well you are well armoured. Since I got a router I’ve had one attack in a month show up in Norton and it’s perfectly easy to use for controlling outbound traffic.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 30, 2003
Mick,

I so rarely use the online Help that the fact a problem arises when using it isn’t a huge problem. That there is a problem with Photoshop of a random nature that causes the program to abort is my greater concern. It seems that I’ve seen problem arise most when accessing Photoshop Help, but also when accessing Open, New, or in one case, Close. Those instances were all after having successfully opened and closed Help as I recall, so perhaps they tie in to having accessed Help, although I can’t see a connection myself.

The best I can do is press on with getting all my software installed and moving along with PS CS until I see any problems arise as part of my editing routine. Perhaps another pattern will surface that can be explored then.

Regards,

Daryl
DM
dave_milbut
Nov 30, 2003
I’m not saying you have a hardware problem daryl, but it’s starting to sound like it’s possible that some of your hardware’s drivers (including possibly bios) may be conflicting with PS. Just a 2 cent thought.
MM
Mick_Murphy
Nov 30, 2003
I wish you the best with it Daryl. Diagnosing random problems can be really difficult. I’ve had lots of hardware-related problems recently which seem to be sorted now.

On my new machine, random Photoshop-induced crashes were due to an incompatible brand of memory. Every other program worked ok but PS would blow it out. The guy who built the machine didn’t check and we turned the whole machine inside out until I checked the motherboard manufacturer’s website and figured it out. 5 whole days now without a crash!

On my older machine, one of the memory sticks had gone bad all of a sudden and it started crashing frequently. I figured this out with a diagnostic utility. I’ve never had problems like these before but I guess I’ve learned a bit from it.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 30, 2003
It is hard to know if this is hardware or not. If so, I’d have thought maybe PS7 would’ve experienced the same, but I’m not sure how PS CS "attacks" the hardware beyond what PS7 does.

While it may be coincidence that I didn’t see the "could not complete your request" (CNC) errors earlier, and also found PS Help not causing problems after a series of open/close actions, I’ve just encountered the CNC error after 10 attempts of PS Help Open/Close followed by selecting "New". What’s different from before? I’ve applied all updates avaialable through Windows Update and installed the Intellitype and Bluetooth Intellipoint drivers. So, it looks like I’ll be backtracking tomorrow to see if I can narrow this down to the culprit affecting it all. Uninstalling the mouse driver didn’t do any good…I don’t think…as I immediately created an R6025 error with a single selection of PS Help followed by New. However, a restart of Photoshop is holding up better. Oh well, time to take a rest. Tomorrow may be a good day to try out using System Restore to back up a ways without having to manually remove any updates.

Daryl
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Nov 30, 2003
I decided to drop ZA as I cannot drop Security. So far so good.

Daryl, if your memory sticks are close to the CPU, pull them one at a time and check carefully for a film of dirt. As I chased down my problems a week ago or so, I thought I had cleaned the box pretty well. I began wondering about the memory sticks, and since i don’t have a diagnostic utility, I pulled them to take them to a vendor with some test hardware. As I got to the stick next to the CPU, I saw it! A splash of dirt on the side next to the cpu. So, I carefully cleaned everything around the area, this time without the sticks in their sockets, and used a mild solvent to clean the sticks. Problems gone away (so far!).
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 30, 2003
Lawrence,

Thanks for the suggestion. I’m about to crack open the case anyway, as I did find a problem with my Nikon LS-2000 related to a problematic SCSI connection, and I need to explore that. So, while I’m at it I’ll check the memory. I did add 1GB extra RAM just prior to installing PS CS, but I never saw any problems in PS7 to suggest any memory-related problem.

These problems have been very frustrating to troubleshoot and I remain of the opinion they are somehow rooted in PS CS, simply for the fact that my system has been trouble-free with any other applications inclusive of PS7. While the components are old, I’d think many may well still be found in users’ systems where they’ve upgraded all but a few items.

What has been particularly frustrating is that just as I feel I may be narrowing the problem cause down to one area, such as a particular series of WinXP updates, or to the installation of WinXP Plus, I’ll prove myself wrong. As I’ve been troubleshooting the problems, I’ve made multiple images of my C drive to make reverting to a lesser system installation easy. Along the way, I’ve also proven the re–activation of PS CS to be a breeze…perhaps 6-8 times thus far. In any case, when I think I’ve isolated the problem, I’ll go back to a lesser build that seemed to be doing pretty well, only to find that another attempt or two at duplicating the problems is more readily successful.

I think I’ve pretty well exhausted my options and can only hope that Adobe eventually finds something awry in PS CS. Although PS CS works on my laptop, the fact I’ve only got 288MB RAM rather limits what I can do on it.

Regards,

Daryl
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Dec 1, 2003
Tough row to hoe, Daryl. Too many things can be involved to be able to pinpoint it adequetly without some sort of powerful diagnostic tool. We need a computer MRI or something like that!

Let me tell you what’s now going on. I have my own weirdnesses showing up.

This problem has shown twice so far. I Import the scanner, set up the scan and tell it to scan. It sits there and does nothing. I wait. Nothing. Check Task Manager. Yup, PS not responding. End Now. Scan disappears, so does PS. Reload PS and were up and running.

This is the first time. Today, same symptoms, same message. So End Now. A bunch of half screens show up. Click the PS exit button, still showing. Nothing. Do it again. Nothing Go to Restart The OS. Nothing. Try it again. Now I cannot even exit the OS. Try to click on the PS icon. Message says cannot initiate as the os is shutting down. Wait. Wait some more. Finally, hit the tower reload button and go to F8 and Last known…..

Now, everyhing is up and running again. Go to Norton and disable Security, but leave the AV enabled.

Runs fine.

Now, the first time the scanner didn’t scan, I had no firewall or AV, just the router, so, I can’t blame it all on Norton. But the fact that shutting down was so difficult suggests that Norton may have gotten in the way.

Who knows? Do you know? Do I know? 😉
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 1, 2003
I bought the 2002 norton firewall after running ZA for about 3 years and trashed it after a month to go back to zonealarm. Never liked it, couldn’t get used to it. Way too complex for what it needs to do. ZA does a great job and is easy to use.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Dec 1, 2003
Different strokes for different folks no doubt….I personally prefer the Norton firewall to ZA, although that’s based upon only my experience with the free version of ZA some time ago. I vaguely recall that what I didn’t like about it may have been a limited degree of control over it, but that could easily be a limitation of a "lite" version. I went with Norton simply because I use the other products and liked the concept of an integrated package that is designed to work together .

Lawrence, who know what was the cause of your scanner problems. I’ll keep an eye open for such things once I reinstall the Norton products. I do intend to do that since the problems I’ve seen with PS CS are unrelated to any 3rd party application…at least that much I have determined for certain, albeit excluding any 3rd party hardware drivers.

As far as utility software goes, I know several in here in the past have recommended Fix-It utilities, which are quite inexpensive…$39 at Best Buy with a $20 or $30 competitive upgrade coupon. While I’ve used them before, they didn’t appear to offer quite as robust tools for searching for problems on one’s system as does Norton with WinDoctor. But, I hate WinDoctor’s automated fix and always do things manually.

Daryl
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 1, 2003
but that could easily be a limitation of a "lite" version.

I use the light (free) version.
LH
Lawrence_Hudetz
Dec 1, 2003
Dave, do you run a virus check, and which one?

ZA seemed to be part of the breakdown that I experienced last couple of weeks, as i saw an error message in the event viewer that appeared to track the time of the BSOD which was of ZA origin, something Vector that tracked internet activities. I uninstalled it but the BS continued (pun intended!) but with a different message.
DM
dave_milbut
Dec 1, 2003
Dave, do you run a virus check, and which one?

NAV 2002

I’ve occasionally seen a ZA error like that. Uninstall and reinstall always fixed it. Also keep ZA up to date!

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