Photoshop hanging up... or not?

Hi,

I'm a newbie to Photoshop and design in general and I've been having strange problems using it on my laptop (1 Gb Asus W3V). The program still responds to maximizing, minimizing, moving, scrolling and such but when I try to use a menu, it does not appear. In the task manager it does not show as "not responding". That only happens in my laptop and not on a desktop with less memory. Also one time it began responding again. That makes me think that maybe it's not hung up, just doing stuff in the background (no HD activity though). Can it be a problem of configuration, memory allocation. I do not know the options in this area and of course do not understand their significance or how to set-up or optimize them.

What could be happening?

Thanks and bye.

--
El Guerrero del Interfaz

"El Guerrero del Interfaz" wrote in
message

Hi,

I'm a newbie to Photoshop and design in general and I've been having strange problems using it on my laptop (1 Gb Asus W3V). The program still responds to maximizing, minimizing, moving, scrolling and such but when I try to use a menu, it does not appear. In the task manager it does not show as "not responding". That only happens in my laptop and not on a desktop with less memory. Also one time it began responding again. That makes me think that maybe it's not hung up, just doing stuff in the background (no HD activity though). Can it be a problem of configuration, memory allocation. I do not know the options in this area and of course do not understand their significance or how to set-up or optimize them.

What could be happening?

Thanks and bye.

--

El Guerrero del Interfaz

Many times, Photoshop can appear to stop responding, and Task Manager will confirm this (usually just after opening or saving) when it is merely performing operations in the background. This behaviour is sometimes more noticeable on laptops due to their lower hardware specifications, only one hard drive, less memory etc., How full is your hard drive? A scratch disc (separate to where PS is installed and your drive is functioning as both) should never be allowed to become more than 85% full, could this be the case in your situation?
You could also have a corrupted preferences file which you need to delete. To do this, hold down the shift, control and alt keys whilst starting Photoshop. If you get the timing right, you will be asked if you want to delete this file, you do.

HTH
MH

Mike Hyndman ha escrito:

Hi,

I'm a newbie to Photoshop and design in general and I've been having strange problems using it on my laptop (1 Gb Asus W3V). The program still responds to maximizing, minimizing, moving, scrolling and such but when I try to use a menu, it does not appear. In the task manager it does not show as "not responding". That only happens in my laptop and not on a desktop with less memory. Also one time it began responding again. That makes me think that maybe it's not hung up, just doing stuff in the background (no HD activity though). Can it be a problem of configuration, memory allocation. I do not know the options in this area and of course do not understand their significance or how to set-up or optimize them.

What could be happening?

Thanks and bye.

--

El Guerrero del Interfaz

Many times, Photoshop can appear to stop responding, and Task Manager will confirm this (usually just after opening or saving) when it is merely performing operations in the background. This behaviour is sometimes more noticeable on laptops due to their lower hardware specifications, only one hard drive, less memory etc.,

I've also observed this behaviour but that's not what I'm writing about. What I'm experiencing does not happens when opening or saving but when I'm doing stuff on a document: painting, erasing, selecting and such. And also the programs does not seems to freeze temporarily as with loading and saving. As I stated scrolling, resizing and similar work but I'm not able to paint, save, load or access to the menus (the menu header changes aspect but the menu does not drop down).

How full is your hard drive? A scratch disc
(separate to where PS is installed and your drive is functioning as both) should never be allowed to become more than 85% full, could this be the case in your situation?

Not quite but close. I have a 100 Gb HD in 2 partitions (it was like this from the factory, don't ask me why). The C:, where Photoshop is installed has left 9.15 Gb, so it's 83.3% full. The other one has 8.99 Gb left, and it's 75.3% full. So maybe I should put the scratch disk on the second partition, although it has less space left?

You could also have a corrupted preferences file which you need to delete. To do this, hold down the shift, control and alt keys whilst starting Photoshop. If you get the timing right, you will be asked if you want to delete this file, you do.

I'm gonna try this. Thanks for the tip.

HTH
MH

Thanks and bye.

--
El Guerrero del Interfaz

"El Guerrero del Interfaz" wrote in
message

Mike Hyndman ha escrito:

Hi,

I'm a newbie to Photoshop and design in general and I've been having strange problems using it on my laptop (1 Gb Asus W3V). The program still responds to maximizing, minimizing, moving, scrolling and such but when I try to use a menu, it does not appear. In the task manager it does not show as "not responding". That only happens in my laptop and not on a desktop with less memory. Also one time it began responding again. That makes me think that maybe it's not hung up, just doing stuff in the background (no HD activity though). Can it be a problem of configuration, memory allocation. I do not know the options in this area and of course do not understand their significance or how to set-up or optimize them.

What could be happening?

Thanks and bye.

--

El Guerrero del Interfaz

Many times, Photoshop can appear to stop responding, and Task Manager will
confirm this (usually just after opening or saving) when it is merely performing operations in the background. This behaviour is sometimes more noticeable on laptops due to their lower hardware specifications, only one
hard drive, less memory etc.,

I've also observed this behaviour but that's not what I'm writing about. What I'm experiencing does not happens when opening or saving but when I'm doing stuff on a document: painting, erasing, selecting and such. And also the programs does not seems to freeze temporarily as with loading and saving. As I stated scrolling, resizing and similar work but I'm not able to paint, save, load or access to the menus (the menu header changes aspect but the menu does not drop down).

How full is your hard drive? A scratch disc
(separate to where PS is installed and your drive is functioning as both) should never be allowed to become more than 85% full, could this be the case
in your situation?

Not quite but close. I have a 100 Gb HD in 2 partitions (it was like this from the factory, don't ask me why). The C:, where Photoshop is installed has left 9.15 Gb, so it's 83.3% full. The other one has 8.99 Gb left, and it's 75.3% full. So maybe I should put the scratch disk on the second partition, although it has less space left?

You could also have a corrupted preferences file which you need to delete.
To do this, hold down the shift, control and alt keys whilst starting Photoshop. If you get the timing right, you will be asked if you want to delete this file, you do.

I'm gonna try this. Thanks for the tip.

HTH
MH

Thanks and bye.

--

El Guerrero del Interfaz,
The actions you describe can be memory intensive operations depending on the size of your image, how much RAM do you have?
You could also try reducing the number of History states in Edit>Preferences>General, 20-15-10 say.
Search your hard drive for *.tmp files and delete them to free up space. The scratch disc should ideally be on another platter but in your case you should be using both partitions as sctratch locations.
Edit>Preferences>Plugins & Scratch Discs and make sure startup and the second partition are selected.

Regards

Mike H