Photoshop Hangs

Steve Schulze

I'm having a lot of trouble in Windows XP with Photoshop CS2 hanging while I'm working on not-especially-complex textures. I'll be painting and then the brush will stop responding. A few seconds later the cursor will change to the loading one and the screen will partially refresh leaving the main menu and floating panels blank. And that's it. It stays like that forever.
I've had similar issues with Photoshop in the past on different versions and different PCs, but generally the stall would only last a few seconds before getting going again.
I'm assuming this is a memory problem of some sort. I've only got one, unpartitioned harddrive which I know is something that Photoshop doesn't like. Why though has the situtation become more frequent and worse recently? It's getting to the stage where it's impractical to try to use Photoshop at all.
I'm considering picking up another hard drive (I should really have one anyway). Do you think this is likely to solve my issues here?

Microneezia

how much space is left on the drive now? when you look at the fragmented statistics how fragmented is your drive? (right click the drive in "my computer" window go to properties then the tools tab, then defragment) Maybe a defrag is all thats needed.... if you have tons of fragmented space (red) then defrag tonight.

Do you have Memturbo? try that application for RAM management as well. Win XP kinda needs it IMO... Vista is pretty good about RAM management, even though Vista itself needs about a gig. Finally check your windows paging file (adjustable from Memturbo) and if Photoshop has a swap drive find out how big that is... If the PS paging file is maxing out because of the limitations of your drive, that could be an issue....Never looked for the PS one myself so i dont know where it is. hmm

Filbot

You pretty much need this update or else CS2 is garbage if you are using a wacom or really the brush tool in general.

The most significant fixes in the 9.0.1 release (also included in the 9.0.2 update) include the following:

- Photoshop no longer hangs for several seconds when using painting tools with quick strokes.

DL LINK: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3446

Steve Schulze

I can kinda see why Photoshop isn't happy.

I nabbed MemTurbo and the update. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for the help.

Microneezia

Ya candycane lane is less striped. depending on the size of that drive you may want to do it over night or more. hmm, that looks like a pretty full drive actually. I dont see all that red turning to free space. Also depending on how long its been that way, windows may not be able to just pick up and clean everything right as rain. I had a defrag go on for hours only to move a couple red bars in the end. i never defraged it, it was full, (200gb with 5gb free) and had it for 3 years or so... if you are in the same boat, dont expect windows to walk on water here...

Good luck!

You should seperate windows and give it its own partition. This is a good idea in general for a number of reasons, including this. lemme us know how it goes