PS CS4 Hanging ...

[Wayne Fox]

I'm having a lot of trouble with PS CS4 hanging.  It must be unique to my system or workflow - I can't find anything out there about others having it.

Running CS4 on 3ghz Dual/Quad MacPro, system 10.5.5.  16 gigs of RAM.  Most of my files are pretty large ... p45 files at 16bit to start with, with several layers.  The image file is coming from LR into a smart object.

Seems to be somewhat time related .. the longer I work the more likely it will hang.  Frequently it will hang when I reopen the RAW file into ACR.  It pretty much hangs at least once every 30 minutes or less.  My command-s keys are getting a little worn, and of course, saving a big file so frequently slows the work.

Using console, this is always the message once it hangs.  It continues to repeat this message, until I finally force quit PS>

10/29/08 10:23:48 PM [0x0-0x47e47e].com.adobe.Photoshop[31371] Adobe Photoshop CS4(31371,0xf0e2f000) malloc: *** mmap(size=12509184) failed (error code=12)
10/29/08 10:23:48 PM [0x0-0x47e47e].com.adobe.Photoshop[31371] *** error: can't allocate region
10/29/08 10:23:48 PM [0x0-0x47e47e].com.adobe.Photoshop[31371] *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

I've tried reinstalling, and most of the other recommendations from Adobe's troubleshooting pdf.

Not sure where to go.  Thought I'd see if anyone has any ideas before I start swapping out RAM, uninstalling and deleting prefs, etc.

[Schewe]

I've tried reinstalling, and most of the other recommendations from Adobe's troubleshooting pdf.

Not sure where to go.  Thought I'd see if anyone has any ideas before I start swapping out RAM, uninstalling and deleting prefs, etc.

What have you done to do to troubleshoot? The first troubleshooting attempt for me would be to delete the prefs and see if that resolves it. The next thing would be to create a new user and see of that resolves the hang/crash. Unless something went horribly wrong in the install, I doubt a re-install will do much good. Have you tried turning off the GPU functions? Some people have had some problems with that and an alternative GPU plug-in designed to enable some older cards to use the CS4 GPU stuff. You haven't played with that have you? The prefs and/or user account would be a good thing to try first.....

[Wayne Fox]

What have you done to do to troubleshoot? The first troubleshooting attempt for me would be to delete the prefs and see if that resolves it. The next thing would be to create a new user and see of that resolves the hang/crash. Unless something went horribly wrong in the install, I doubt a re-install will do much good. Have you tried turning off the GPU functions? Some people have had some problems with that and an alternative GPU plug-in designed to enable some older cards to use the CS4 GPU stuff. You haven't played with that have you? The prefs and/or user account would be a good thing to try first.....

I re-installed because I had moved some plug-ins over from CS3, then read this could be a problem.  But I mistakenly thought the re-install would also recreate the preferences ... not sure why I even thought that.  Doh.

I just read through the tech note again, and followed the directions to rename the CS4 folder in my user preferences files to force recreation of the folder ... perhaps that will resolve the problem.

I have read about issues with the GPU.  My card, though a little old (ATI x1900) is supported.  I haven't tried anything with that yet.  If the problem continues,  turning off the OpenGL drawing option seems to be a logical thing to try?

[jerryrock]

I am running Photoshop CS4 on a 2.8 GHz quad Mac Pro, 12 gigs ram and ATI X1900XT video card (Leopard 10.5.5). I am not experiencing any errors or slow-downs.
My thoughts are that it may be your Photoshop memory preferences and scratch disk allocation that are causing the problems. Ideally the scratch disk should be set to a separate drive as fast or faster than the OS drive (I use a separate internal drive for Time Machine back ups). It could also be a Time Machine bottleneck causing a system slow-down if set to an external drive.

Jerry

[Wayne Fox]

I am running Photoshop CS4 on a 2.8 GHz quad Mac Pro, 12 gigs ram and ATI X1900XT video card (Leopard 10.5.5). I am not experiencing any errors or slow-downs.
My thoughts are that it may be your Photoshop memory preferences and scratch disk allocation that are causing the problems. Ideally the scratch disk should be set to a separate drive as fast or faster than the OS drive (I use a separate internal drive for Time Machine back ups). It could also be a Time Machine bottleneck causing a system slow-down if set to an external drive.

Jerry

Thanks Jerry. Time Machine is off, I enable it after I am finished for the night, so it is never running while I am working.  I thought I set the scratch disk right, I have 2 separate disks in a RAID 0 that I use strictly for Photoshop scratch.  I just reset prefs so I can't verify that, since it defaulted back to the main drive.

After reading Adobes guide I'm a little confused.  I thought with 16gigs of available RAM I could set photoshop to use maximum RAM ... which is 3gigs.  I assumed since I had so much overhead RAM it would work fine, even though Adobe recommends no more than 75%.

I had one crash last night after resetting prefs, fortunately it was when I quit the program after it finished saving the open files.  If it continues I'll crank this down a little and see what happens.  I remember reading a pdf on maximizing photoshop .. it talked about the memory settings.  I'll find that and review it as well, may shed some light on what I"m doing wrong.