Memory could not be allocated for the activation process

I have Win XP, 20GB HDD, 256 Meg RAM and have just installed Photoshop CS. I previously had Photoshop 7 which ran fine, but when PSCS starts up I get the message:

"Memory could not be allocated for the activation process. Please close all applications and try again."

I have nothing else running, and this error occurs just after PSCS finishes initialising.

I have searched the FAQ's and forums and all similar problems seem to occur after the program has opened, and the solutions usually involve changing something in PSCS while it's open - which I can't do!

My virtual memory is set at 360 Mb - when jacked up to 500 Mb there was no change. Can someone help me???????

With only 256MB of ram you may be finding that the system (Win XP) or other XP or app related services are leaving too little left for Photoshop. Also, how much free space is left on your 20GB hard disk?

The amount of free space space on the hard drive may be the key to running PSCS with not a lot of memory. I have a laptop with almost nothing on the hard drive (40gb). It only has 128 mb of RAM, and PSCS runs fine on that. I also don't have it connected to another drive, and have never changed the scratch disk because I don't use the laptop for editing.

When testing PS on it, I took a 5 mb photograph, and added layers and things, and played with settings until the file was over 100 mb, and PSCS still didn't crash!

Kathi

There's about 15Gb free space on the HDD so I'm not sure if that's the issue.

Thanks for your help. Does anyone have any other ideas?

At this stage I'm considering just putting PS 7 back on.

make sure no other applications are running. when starting windows, hit f5 to start xp in safe mode. then try to activate.