Heather,
How frustrating this must be for you. I can certainly understand your reaction to the program because of it. I’m not sure what OS you are using. I assume Windows? but don’t know for sure.
Do you have Norton Anti-virus installed on your PC? Many folks have experienced odd things happening if Elements was installed with Norton or other AV programs running at the time of install.
So, if that is the case, uninstall Elements once again, look for an remove any traces of it from your HD and then turn off the AV program and try a reinstall.
Don’t know that this will help, but it’s worth a shot.
Cheers,
Dick
OOPS, Didn’t read your post accurately it seems. I see it was Windows XP you reinstalled. Did you find that you had to reinstall the OS because nothing would load? Did you trying booting in Safe Mode?
Heather,
Some time ago I printed up a set of instructions, dealing with troublesome installation, which was referenced on this forum. I have not had occasion to utilize this recipe. However, I offer it for your consideration. It is my sense that this is a generic procedure,
not just restricted to Delorme/
<
http://www.delorme.com/support/installXP_Prt.asp> Ken
Heather,
I agree with Ken. I have used the Delorme approach to a clean install under 98, 98SE and XP for every program over the last few years and have, so far, a very trouble free environment on all 3 PC’s. Almost every install suggests that you close all running programs. The problem is that so much is running that isn’t obvious. It takes a bit longer but is well worth the results.
Bob
Reinstalling windows XP is a rare occurance in my experience. Twice in a couple of weeks? Yikes!!
One thing to bear in mind when using XP is that it has a really nifty feature called System Restore. You can restore the system status to a time when everything was working just fine, therefore eliminating the need to reinstal windows and loose your preferences and possibly your data.
When installing a new software package, always create a manual restore point using system restore, you can then restore the point immediately prior to a troublesome install.
System restore can be found under
Start, all programs, accessories, system utilities, system restore.
I wish you better luck with windows and Elements. They are both great programs, keep calm and take it one step at a time.
JP
Thanks for all of the suggestions.
I’ve tried MSConfig. It doesn’t solve the problem.
I either can use Windows or I can use Elements. I can’t use both. The only way I can keep Elements from causing problems is to disable the WIA service altogether, which disables the ability to download pictures from my digital camera.
Incidentally, the 2.1.0 drivers for my HP PSC all-in-one printer/scanner/copier have the SAME problem. HP informed that I should disable WIA and use their own proprietary software instead. Sure, that works great for my scanner, but it doesn’t support my camera.
I can’t decide which is worse — Microsoft expecting everyone to use their "standards" or companies like HP and Adobe thumbing their noses at M$ and screwing all of us in the process.
As for System Restore, I don’t use it. All it does is eat up HD space. I can install Windows clean in about 25 minutes.
You could get a card reader, forget using the camera to acquire with.
Mac
I either can use Windows or I can use Elements. I can’t use both. >The only way I can keep Elements from causing problems is to >disable the WIA service altogether, which disables the ability to >download pictures from my digital camera.
I´ve disabled my WIA, and use the normal file browser (explorer) to copy my pics from camera to a folder on my PC, and then open the files from there.
Works OK for me,
/Micke
Thanks Micke.
I totally forgot about that avenue. The camera is recognized as a removable drive now that I think about it.
Heather Wrote
"As for System Restore, I don’t use it. All it does is eat up HD space." It’s your computer and you can manage it as you see fit, but I’d give system restore a second look. The amount of potential disk space it uses can be adjusted using a simple slider control and it tells you how may MB’s may get used.
"I can install Windows clean in about 25 minutes." Pretty good work, but what about downloading all this security patches from Windows Update? I bet that takes it’s time to both download and install all the updates. Same for anti virus updates and signatures. That’s a whole lot to go through each time. I’ve only had to resort to system restore twice in two years but it really does work!
In addition to system restore don’t forget that drivers can be rolled back individually which may be a useful trouble shooting technique.
JP
I build firewalls for a living…it’s no big deal.
I don’t trust System Restore or anything that might potentially corrupt data. I always do fresh installs, it’s just the way I was raised… :^)
