trouble using the sketch filters

I'm using Photoshop Elements 2.0 on Windows 2000, 768 mb memory.

When I try to use the sketch filter for photocopy or stamp, I get an error that says both background and foreground are the same, even though they are not. When I first installed this program, everything worked great, filters, everything. Then it stopped working, so I uninstalled it and re-installed it again thinking that the problem was caused by installing on top of the trial version. Then I defragged my system thinking that might be the problem.. Same errors...Any help you can give me would be very greatly appreciated..
Thank you,
JoAnn

What are your foreground and background colors?

There are many, some reds in the foreground and background is brown. It's a photo of some flowers.

JoAnn, what Elena is asking is what are the colors in the squares at the bottom of your toolbox? Those are the foreground and background colors, respectively. If they're the same, it won't work. You can click on the default (black square overlapping white square) to get the black foreground/white background default.

Oh, I see. They're both white. It worked!! Thank you! Can you tell how new I am at this?

JoAnn - we were all new that many months ago...!

That's for sure. We've all been new. Thanks for covering that one Chuck! I should have been more specific.

Well, thank you soooo much!! I'm glad it was simple.
JoAnn