Problems with PSE 4.0 Editor

[emergeboy]

Hello,

I'm having some pretty serious performance problems running the PSE 4.0 editor and was hoping that someone has had similar problems and perhaps some insight as to what I should do to solve it.

I'm running Windows XP with 512MB RAM, an ATI Radeon 9700 video card, and my CPU is an AMD Athlon running at 1.8GhZ.

So here's the deal:

I have been enjoying Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 and Photoshop Elements 2.x for the past year without any problems whatsoever. I also have Adobe Photoshop 7.01 on my machine and have never encountered problems with it.

Yesterday morning I purchased PSE 4.0 from the Adobe web site, downloaded the app and then installed. It had no problem transferring my catalog of 7,000+ photos, and I also used the Editor to scan & edit about 25 photos and everything ran smoothly.

This morning, thinking that things were good with the new version, I took the step to uninstall the old software (PSA 2.0 & PSE 2.x) and since then the editor has basically been unusable. It does actually run, but it is slow as molasses and my hard drive is in a constant state of heavy chugging. Even just opening & then closing the app takes about 5 minutes. Scanning a single pic and saving it may take upwards of 20 minutes -- obviously not a nice situation.

Since running into the problem, I've completely uninstalled & reinstalled the application, and have taken all of the steps recommended on the Adobe site with the exception of actually formatting my system and starting from scratch and the problem persists.

The strange thing with all of this is that the problem only cropped up this morning after I uninstalled my old software, which makes me think that it is not an actual performance-related issue with my setup.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Bryon

[MikeH]

I'm running Windows XP with 512MB RAM, an ATI Radeon 9700 video card, and my CPU is an AMD Athlon running at 1.8GhZ.

Hi, welcome to the forums :)

Sorry to hear that you are having problems... before I offer any explanations or solutions, what size is your hard drive and how much free space do you have?

Mike

[emergeboy]

Hi Mike... thanks for the reply.

The drive that PSE 4 is on is 80GB and there is currently about 13GB free. It has also been recently defragged.

Bryon

[maszep]

I was hoping someone has an answer to this problem, as I am experiencing the same problem - editor and opening/closing the app. I have not, however, uninstalled PSE 2. I have also read elsewhere on the forum, that others are experiencing this issue as well. I am running a Pent 4, 2.4GHz, with 256 MB of RAM, 36 Gig with 16 free.

I have gone from PSE 2 to PSE 4 and love the features, but am so frustrated by the speed in the editor that I may downgrade. I did disable the firewall, as suggested in a previous thread on this issue, and that seems help, but just a little - and that is not the best long term solution.

Has this been identified as a common problem? Is anyone addressing it??

-Michael

[Mary]

Hi Michael and welcome to the forum:)
I hate to bear bad news but the problem is the small amount of RAM you have. PSE needs at least 512 MB to run properly and you have listed yours as 256. I ran into the same thing and had to upgrade my RAM.:)

[emergeboy]

After a couple days of complete frustration, I took the somewhat radical step of reinstalling Windows XP on my computer. Once completed, I reinstalled PSE 4 and have had no problems whatsoever, and in fact, love it!

In the end, I'm not sure what was causing the conflict, or why.

Bryon

[Wendy]

Hi Byron ...

... and welcome to the forum :)

So glad that the problems now seems to be sorted out ...


Wendy

[GaryK]

Byron

Thanks for the update. Kind of drastic measures, but you have to do, what you have to do:)

All I can figure is that somehow a shared dll (or something) was deleted durint the uninstall.
Unfortunately windows does not always take out everything when you uninstall a program. And sometimes fresh program installs do not always overwrite certain files if they see something of them somewhere.

[Norm F]

Michael,

I also found that 256 RAM just didn't cut it. Upgrading to a minimum of 512 is cheap and effective. I have also found it helpful to get off of my network while I edit photos so I can shut down my anti-virus program. Finally, I purchased "Registry Mechanic" last week to clean up my Windows registry. It seems to have had a positive effect on the speed of my computer. Good luck.

[MikeH]

After a couple days of complete frustration, I took the somewhat radical step of reinstalling Windows XP on my computer. Once completed, I reinstalled PSE 4 and have had no problems whatsoever, and in fact, love it!

In the end, I'm not sure what was causing the conflict, or why.

Bryon

Byron,

Glad to hear that you sorted it out...

Mike

[MikeH]

I was hoping someone has an answer to this problem, as I am experiencing the same problem - editor and opening/closing the app. I have not, however, uninstalled PSE 2. I have also read elsewhere on the forum, that others are experiencing this issue as well. I am running a Pent 4, 2.4GHz, with 256 MB of RAM, 36 Gig with 16 free.

I have gone from PSE 2 to PSE 4 and love the features, but am so frustrated by the speed in the editor that I may downgrade. I did disable the firewall, as suggested in a previous thread on this issue, and that seems help, but just a little - and that is not the best long term solution.

Has this been identified as a common problem? Is anyone addressing it??

-Michael

Michael,

Although Adobe quote 256Mb as the minimum for PSE4, they do also recommend 512Mb. I've never known any software run properly on the minimum spec., especially RAM.

Mike