PSE5 Will Not Open - Help!

[Hoborg]

Hi,

I just bought PSE5 for Windows XP, but I can't seem to get the editor or organiser to open up at all. The only thing that works is the photo-downloader. When I click the icon it installs on the desktop that points to "Photoshop Elements 5.0.exe", nothing happens at all. If I instead try to open "PhotoshopElementsEditor.exe", the splash screen comes up and it tries to load but eventually just gives me an error that says:

"Unable to continue because of a hardware or system error. Sorry, but this error is unrecoverable."

I tried reinstalling multiple times with all other programs halted, and I tried pretty much everything in this article (http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/333200.html) on the Adobe support site.

I have an Athlon XP 1800+, 1.21 GB of RAM, and plenty of free harddrive space (about 20 gigs). I'm running windows XP Home with Service Pack 2.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what the problem could be?

Thanks a lot!

[graficalicus]

make sure no one else is logged in to the computer you're using - Elements is picky about only one user at a time being logged in (so in XP, you can't have two people logged in and just use "Switch User" - the other person has to be logged out)

[Wendy]

Hi Hoborg ...

... and welcome to the forum :)

Did you have anything like Norton running when you did the install ??

Wendy

[Hoborg]

Hiya, thanks!

I disabled Norton and ctrl-alt-deleted all other running processes before installing. I am the only user logged in.

I had Photoshop 5.5 installed on this computer before, so I thought maybe that could have conflicted, but I deleted that install and there dosen't seem to be anything in the registry left over from it.

[genevh]

Hi Hoborg!

A couple other things you might want to try if you still haven't had any luck installing PSE5 yet. And a question - have you had the same problem with any other program installations lately?

I run Norton also and have never found it to interfere with installing anything. But that is just me. Do you run any anti-spyware programs? I run Webroot and have found it can interfere with installing programs as it prevents a lot of things from making changes to the OS that it thinks are harmful. Also, be careful with ctl-alt-del and killing processes. You may be killing something you need.

And if you are having problems installing anything, your windows installer files may be corrupted. You can update them here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=889482fc-5f56-4a38-b838-de776fd4138c&DisplayLang=en

Gene
- workin' the night shift