Reading through this forum, one item that stands out, is the frequency that "deleting the Preferences file" is found to solve a large variety of problems encountered during use of PE1 & 2. Has there been any discussion relative to why that occurs? Is it a "bug" in Elements? If so, will this be addressed in PE3? If not, maybe there should be a more convenient "Delete Preferences" button added in the new version.
Or, am I just overstating the magnitude of the problem?
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Has anyone ever tried to backup them up (the preferences) and restore them when needed to trash them, instead ? I know about Corel Painter 8, which preference files get bigger simply by launching the application. So periodically, you need to trash the preferences. But since it’s a pain in the rear end to reconstruct the preferences, I backed up mine and whenever there’s a problem, I simply restore my backup.
I believe that we see problems solved by deleting preferences and think it happens often.
But the reality is that on the forum a lot of people have never had to delete them. And also the people that are active on the forum are only a fraction of the total users of PSE.
It has never been determined what happens to require a reset and cold well be something that we unknowingly do ourselves. But regardless, it is a good thing that the reset is an easy repair tool 🙂
If the reset preferences were simpler to do, it could be done by mistake. When you have set your workspace to your own way of working, it can be a pain to set everything back up again.
Possibly, you could copy the pref’ file and rename it for when you need it again, I’ve never tried.
Preferences are written and rewritten every time you launch Elements and quit the app. They record postions of palettes, tool settings etc. Because the file is written and overwritten so often it can become corrupt from time to time. Also, a problem is often a case of someone having changed a tool setting and not knowing how to get back. Hosing prefs is often a quick and easy fix to return to default states.
This is true of Photoshop as well as Elements, and is just a standard troubleshooting technique, and a harmless way to return to factory defaults. Most people rarely have to do this, but it is usually the first thing you should try before doing more extreme trouble shooting things like reinstalls etc.
This can be a standard trouble shooting technique for other problems , too. I deleted the prefs for my keyboard a year or so ago after the Command P shortcut got messed up. Worked like a charm. 🙂
I like that idea (backup the Preferences folder). I found mine (named "Photoshop Elements 2.0 Prefs") under my user profile in "Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop\Elements\" (for Windows Me).
Maybe a "Preferences" Backup/Restore function would be a useful program addition, rather than a more dangerous and painful delete and reconstruct.
Richard,
Thanks for the added info. I was not aware that the Preferences included the position and setting status, as well as the user-defined settings. I would suspect that it is something in the status definition, that is causing the file corruption, rather than the repeated writing. I noticed that there was no apparent correlation between the 8 categories of user-set preferences, and the 9 files in the Preferences folder. If there were, we could test backups of individual files to identify where the corruption is introduced.
Actually, there is an EXTREMELY EASY way to delete the preferences file (which works for Photoshop Elements as well as Photoshop when either is giving you problems, and it’s NOT a PSE thing, either):
When you click your icon to start the program, IMMEDIATELY press and hold the following keys: Shift CTRL ALT
You will be prompted with a dialogue box to delete the preferences. Click OK.
<rather than a more dangerous and painful delete and reconstruct>
There really is no danger in reconstructing prefs and if you use the macro Walt described it shouldn’t be painful. Photoshop users have been doing this for years.
Mary, it depends on which platform you use. I’ll give the instructions with keystrokes for both
With Elements closed, click on the start up icon and then make a quick grab for (Win) Control, Alt, and Shift keys (Mac) Command, Option, and Shift. Hold all three down simultaneously until you get a screen asking if you want to delete Settings. Say Yes. A new folder will build as Elements continues to launch.
