Problems with Organizer

[pdw26]

I spent a lot of time tagging my photos in the Organizer section of Elements 3. Now it will not load- it freezes as it starts to load. I have to use control-alt-delete and it says the program is not responding. Any ideas?
Thank you.
Pat W.

[Mary]

I have found the Organizer to need a lot of computer resources. In the beginning I was told to walk away and let it process for a longer time than I thought it would take. When I came back it was done.

Even with a P4 processor and 512 MB of RAM, I find it slow and I am trying very hard to be patient.

[pdw26]

Are there any computer settings I could change to allow it to use more memory and thus work faster? Thanks.
Pat

[Mary]

When I posted my concerns early in January, Mike made this reply:

"Also, under Editor > Preferences > Memory & Image Cache you can specify the cache settings and memory usage for Elements. "

It was also suggested that I defrag my drives which I did and I am saving my money for some more memory.

Let us know how you get on.

[MikeH]

I spent a lot of time tagging my photos in the Organizer section of Elements 3. Now it will not load- it freezes as it starts to load. I have to use control-alt-delete and it says the program is not responding. Any ideas?
Thank you.
Pat W.

When I posted my concerns early in January, Mike made this reply:

"Also, under Editor > Preferences > Memory & Image Cache you can specify the cache settings and memory usage for Elements. "

It was also suggested that I defrag my drives which I did and I am saving my money for some more memory.

Let us know how you get on.

pdw26

What is spec is your PC?

Mike

[pdw26]

My PC is a brand new Dell running Windows XP professional. 229 GB on disc. It should be working perfectly- I have only had it for a few months!
Pat

[MikeH]

Pat,

OK - just wanted to be sure it wasn't your PC (like not enough RAM). :)

Sorry - more question...

When does this happen? (i.e. when you start PE3, or loading the Organizer from Editor?)

How many photos do you have in Organizer?

Have you tried Mary's suggestion?

Mike

[pdw26]

Hello- I cannot find any way to start organizer- I have tried both from Editor and from windows explorer. I just tried Mary's suggestion. I pushed the memory as high as it could go. I didn't know what to set cache on, but I tried 8 (it was on 4).
I have a LOT of photos in the Organizer- like 6000 or something like that. The actual photos are on CDs but the cataloging is in Orgaizer. I spent a lot of time tagging and cataloging them all.
Thank you for helping me.

[MikeH]

I cannot find any way to start organizer- I have tried both from Editor and from windows explorer.

Pat

Can you start Organizer without a cd in your PC?

Mike

[pdw26]

It does not make any difference to have no CD in my machine. I have tried restarting the machine since I changed the memory and it still won't start. The "loading" bar goes smoothly, the program starts to come on, then it gets stuck in the same place- with a gray rectangle in the upper left. If I do control-alt-delete it says "program not responding".
I am finding this so frustrating!

[Wendy]

Pat,

When did you do control/Alt /delete ....

You need to do it just after clicking on the icon to open PSE.


Wendy

[pdw26]

I don't understand, Wendy. I only do "control-alt-delete" after the program has been stuck for a while and I am convinced that once again, it is not going to open. I do it in order to get out of the stuck position, close the partially opened and unusable program and get on with something else. The Editor part of Elements works fine. Thanks you for your help.
Pat

[pdw26]

I left organizer in the stuck position for a long time and came back and there was a small box saying "out of memory". There must be some way with this new super computer that I can give Organizer enough memory to work with. Any ideas?
Thanks.
Pat

[MikeH]

Pat,

I would think it is extremely unlikely that your PC doesn't have enough memory to run Organizer... but I would reset setings in Editor > Preferences > Memory & Image Cache to 4 and 50%.

You can check whether Organizer is over cooking your PC by looking under the Processes tab when you press CTRL-ALT-DEL while Organizer is trying to load.

You could also check whether the a large image cache is causing the problem by looking in:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Catalog Folders

Beyond this I am pretty much struggling to know what is causing this. I think you are at the point where I'd be considering re-installing PE3 in case the Organizer or the catalog is corrupt... If you have the files on cd, you won't lose any tags etc.

Mike

[pdw26]

I checked the cache folder as you suggested. I did have a very large cahche: 116,616 kb. What does that mean? Is there something I can/should do about it?
I also did control-alt-delete during start up but was not sure how to interpret what I saw. I did see that it was using 54% of CPU.

Does all of this suggest anything to you?

To rteinstall the program, would I delete the old on first? I am so worried about losing all those tags I spent days establishing. The originals are on CDs, I know I wouldn't lose them, but I would like to preserve the classifications.

Thank you.

Pat

[MikeH]

Pat,

Is the name of the large cache file "in4.cache"? If so, delete it (but keep in the Recycle Bin for the time being) and then try to load Organizer. PE3 will rebuild this file when Organizer succesfully loads.

You can purge this file, which using XP is probably a good idea from time to time.

Try this first... but if it does come to a re-install, providing you use the Windows Add/Remove program only and have your pictures on CD, you won't lose tag information.

Let me know how you get on deleting the cache.

Mike

[pdw26]

Hi- I deleted the cache but unfortunately it is still the same, stalling and then finally saying "out of memory". Do you think it would help to call Adobe tech support, or is that what you are? If I decide I have to re-install, do I delete the old program first? I cannot imagine how the tags survive if I delete the program. Please give me as detailed instructions as you can as to how best to manage the reinstall and have the most liklihood of saving the tags.

Thank you for this continuing help!
Pat

[MikeH]

Pat,

Sorry for not replying earlier... Also sorry that my suggestion didn't work... :?

I'm not Adobe tech support - just a regular user like most others on this forum. It may be worth calling Adobe tech support as I don't have anymore suggestions. In this position I would re-install the software..

If you uninstall PE3 using Windows Add/Remove and don't run any clean up programs you shouldn't lose the tag information. In another post, someone else who had photos on disc reinstalled the software and the tags were preserved. This isn't something I have done myself though.

Windows Add/Remove is found in START > Control Panel. Double Click on the Add/Remove icon. From the list of programs that apprears, highlight PE3 and click on the "Change/Remove" button. This will remove PE3 safely. You can then reinstall PE3 the same way you installed it from new.

I suggest that you call Adobe tech support first as you suggested.

Let me know how you get on...

Mike

[js2001]

Hi,
I was following your postings since I had the same problem since yesterday. Everytime I tried to open photoshop/organizer ithang up on me. I even had it run all night and no result.

I even de-installed the software and reinstalled it all multiple times today.

One of the respondents in this thread gave an important clue.

I looked up the catalog file (through search) and found the following files:
my catalog
my catalog-undo (note: PSA file)

Close the editor and then double click on "my catalog-undo". It worked for me but I lost all my tags....(it took me days to organize it all)...but I guess this is better than not working at all!

I did not try to see what happens if yu restore the back up.

I hope this works for you as well.

Best Regards,

George Sisak

[Ward Grant]

George,

I am not sure what the catalog-undo file does, but I think we may be able to help you get your catalog open. I had to do a search for this file and it is not in the standard folder for catalogs; I think it is some kind of standard catalog Elements installs.

If you want to see if your true catalog is still around, be sure Show Hidden Files and Folders is turned on in Windows Explorer and then look in the following location:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Catalog\My Catalog.PSA. (check the date to see if this seems your most current one).

Hold down the Ctrl key and click to open. Hopefully you will get a popup asking something about recovering the catalog. Answer yes to this popup.

Hopefully, this will be the catalog which has your tags.

Hope this helps.

[BrianZero]

Have look at the TechNotes in Adobe
There is some good stuff there on troubleshooting issues for PSE 2 through 5

To be going on with, check the size of your page file
should ideally be 1.5 times the amount of RAM
Also what about a scratch disk - Best on another drive - can be a partition

[clemsonjim]

If you have the disk or a download copy of the software, when you insert it and/or click setup.exe it starts and you will only be given the options of repair or un-install of PSE and it will not remove your catagories etc.
I would try the repair route first and then if that does not work I would do an un-install from disk and then re-install. Also if that gets you running, I would then do a File>Catalog>Recover. That resorts the database and cleans the empty spaces and solves a lot of problems. I do it regularly and also when some little quirk happens. I have over 13,000 images in Organizer and it runs great.
I have upgraded from the old Album days to PSE 5 and the catalogs have upgraded and run without any major problems.
If you were to re-install 3.0 or whatever you had before, I don't think the catalogs convert backwards as they do when you upgrade. I would try the re-install and then Adobe and also keep looking here, someone will eventually have the answer.
Good luck.

[PattyD]

I had a similar problem with my Organizer and had to call Adobe support. When it was 5pm they had to hang up but in the mean time we removed all of my fonts that were not required by the operating system which didn't seem to help at all. Then I reinstalled my program and things worked. When I got my catalog opened again (it has about 15,000 digital scrapbook supply images in it) I noticed that the last thumbnail showing was a scrapbook file in psd format that had many, many layers. I read somewhere on this forum that someone else was having a problem when these psd files were saved in their organizer. I've stopped saving those in my organizer but always have to remember to uncheck the box. Ever since I stopped saving the psd files I haven't had a problem....I really shoudn't have said that I have to go find some wood to knock on now! Good luck I know this won't fix your problem now but maybe in the future.