Photoshop: disabling web help docs

moose

I don't know if I am the only one who experiences this problem with Photoshop (CS3 and CS4 versions), but when viewing the layer styles window (layer properties), Photoshop sometimes decides on its own that I REALLY need its help. It will then open up 5-18 help windows in my browser, or as it just did to me: add 10 every time i click on photoshop after it auto-tabs me to the web browser. Was pretty hilarious until it started crashing Chrome, and i had 213 tabs (and climbing every time i focused photoshop).

Does any one know how to completely disable photoshop's help feature, so it can never, ever, ever do this to me again? The internet failed me and i couldn't find anything - thought I'd ask

Axios

Ha, this has happened to me a few times. I can see it being really frustrating if it happens frequently, especially since it makes my computer hang for a bit as it opens all those tabs.

I always assumed I had just done something really stupid and Photoshop was mocking me.

Racer445

This happens in CS2 as well with the offline "help center" windows. I'm really not sure why this happens, but I noticed it far more in XP than in vista or 7.

Ruz

I always thought that was a ram issue ie as you start running out of memory the help files go beserk. I used to get it in pshop 7 even

SpeCter

What the.... i never had this once but looks kinda funny and frustrating.
What about adding photoshop to your firewall or hosts lists, so that it doesn´t try to communicate with the internet?

renderhjs

happened several times to me as well, though not on a daily basis. I always assumed that PS was broken- guess it is to some extend.

nullfed

I remember this being an issue since version 6 when they changed to the layer style palette. I don't remember getting it on version 5/5.5 so I don't think it is an issue with XP/Vista. It used to kill Windows 98 though.

Rather than trying to disable the help (not sure thats even possible without knowing the inner workings of PS and the registry, perhaps?) I would recommend just going with the flow - Get to task manager ASAP and get ready to do a messy kill of chrome if possible, save your work and reboot. There have been a few occasions when I couldn't do even that after ignoring it and carrying on with work and I regretted not rebooting everytime.

moose

Hey thanks for the replies guys! glad to hear its wide spread. Didn't we have a resident Adobe & Photoshop guy lurking around? Not that he'd want to get thrown to the lions - but this seems like a problem that has been throughout many revisions of photoshop, and could possibly something to look at fixing for future patches/releases is possible! I'd .

I'm going to try that fix at home Dado. I can't think of why i wouldn't be able to turn off internet connectivity with PS, but i think there has to be *something* useful that uses it

This problem used to occur nearly every day for me while using CS3, however its super rare these days with 64bit CS4. This is the first time its happened in a few months actually, which historically speaking is pretty good - but it was a bad one, where photoshop was rendered unusable by the problem, not allowing me to focus on the application. I've had my help button unbound for ages too, and i use all the F keys for actions, so somethin else must be amiss.

nullfed: i've rarely rebooted for PS issues, but could give it a go. I frequently get the "cant import clipboard" bug/feature(??), which a restart of PS always fixes.

Mark Dygert

It happened to me once in CS2, 32bit Vista with chrome. Freaked me the hell out, thought I did something wrong or it was a crazy virus. Everything scanned ok and I restarted, it never happened again, then two weeks later I got a new machine 64bit vista, and upgraded to CS4 and started using firefox again. It hasn't happened to me yet, knock on wood. It's been 3mo.

nullfed

The clipboard bug is another old chestnut :] I have only had it once on a work machine a few jobs ago and If I remember right, the registry fix did sort it out:

something like this I think:
http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007/09/05/how-to-fix-the-photoshop-clipboard/

If you search 'photoshop clipboard bug' you should find confirmation that it works before you try it - my memory is a bit hazy on that one!

Cap

This happened to me once during an art test, ended up losing a bit of work...that was not a fun experience. It seemed like any time I clicked within the PS window it would trigger 9 or 10 windows once the initial window avalanche started, preventing me from saving anything I was working on. I found this thread at the adobe forums saying its either a "system wide shortcut" or triggered by low memory: http://forums.adobe.com/message/1657629

When it happened I also remember seeing something about it being triggered by the color picker but I couldn't find the page I saw it on.

00Zero

ugh, this happens too often. actually happened at work today. it gets so bad, sometimes it opens over 100 windows

moose

been away from this for a bit... forgot to check updates!

From what i can recall, the only thing that set it off was opening up layer properties. I use a hotkey for it, and dont double click layers. There is no solid repro anywhere that i have found, just annoying

makebox

Simple work-around that works for me since PS 7.

First uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types", if you don't know how (read here)


For CS 5 and CS 4, locate and rename "Program Files Folder\Adobe\Adobe Help\Adobe Help.exe" to "Adobe Help2.exe", then create a dummy file (text file). Rename dummy file to "Adobe Help.exe".

For older version CS 3 (that use only browser to view offline help) and below, just rename the "Adobe Help" or "Help" folder to something else.