UNABLE TO CONTINUE BECAUSE OF A HARDWARE OR SYSTEM ERROR. SORRY, BUT THIS ERROR IS UNRECOVERABLE!!!

Hi there!!
All of a sudden, my Photoshop won´t work.
I´ve used it normally yesterday and today it just keep informing an error message, which says:

"UNABLE TO CONTINUE BECAUSE OF A HARDWARE OR SYSTEM ERROR. SORRY, BUT THIS ERROR IS UNRECOVERABLE."

I haven´t removed or added any hardware or changed anything in my system lately. I use Photoshop 7, Windows XP Service Pack 2, my processor is an Athlon XP, 512 RAM and my printer is a HP Deskjet 610C.
I´ve already tried to uninstall and reinstall Photoshop, but it won´t work!!

What should I do?

Many thanks for your attention,
Helen

Try resetting your preferences per the procedure in the faq. If that doesn't help, reinstall.

And if you do reinstall, don't forget to download the 7.0.1 update

Helen: After you uninstall, don't forget to delete any directories and files related to PS that are left over.

If this continues, try swapping the RAM out.

Thank you!!! I´ll try to do that!!!!
The weird thing is that it happenned all of a sudden...
Thank you all!! :)

I've gotten a similar message on occasion... (PS7, Windows 2000 SP4). Seems to be a memory leak of some sort.

I reboot Windows and I'm good for a few more weeks.

You might try adjusting your RAM % value upward in the Preferences dialog.

OptimizeMemory? It's free, it may help you

Before you think about "optimising" memory you might like to read this:

< http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/ArticleID/41095/ 41095.html>

Thanks for the link JJ

All I can say, theory or not, is that at a practical and pragmatic level I have noticed an improvement in the speed that things happen onscreen.

Of course, it may be delusional and one of these days I may prevent it from starting by juggling msconfig settings but until then I will be happy for it taking up the system resources it does.

This 'puter is not really a games machine and, for example, Avant browser in full screen mode is really sweeter too with the claimed RAM defragger

Hi there!!
Thanks for the tips.
I deleted every photoshop file...changed the preferences, installed again...and got the same message...
Will try to sort the memory thing out.
But I thought 512 would be satisfactory for photoshop.
Thank u
Helen

oops...changed my mind after reading this link
it seems that it doesn´t work to defragment the memory.