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Garconis
Garconis
Known Participant
July 7, 2011

P: "Adobe Community Help" keeps popping open (Windows)

  • July 7, 2011
  • 437 replies
  • 11657 views

Adobe Community Help keeps popping open when working within Adobe Photoshop CS5. I'm not sure if I'm doing some sort of shortcut that causes it to open, but sometimes (maybe once instance, during a 40hr week) Adobe Community Help will open in a Window while I am doing stuff in Adobe Photoshop CS5.

I'm not sure what causes it, but I'll close the Community Help window, and then continue working in Photoshop, and it will open again. Only way to keep it from opening back up again is to close and restart Photoshop. This has happened to me on my home PC as well, and in previous versions of Photoshop, if I remember correctly. I am using Windows 7 now, but I think I've had this happen on XP too.

Is it because there are updates available? Is it because I'm doing some sort of weird shortcut that I don't know about?

An example: I was transforming an object (using the mouse, clicking, using shift button while moving the cursor, using the space bar while panning, etc.) It just opened again. Guess it's time to restart Photoshop...

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    437 replies

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    David_Ben
    David_Ben
    Participant
    August 5, 2012
    Im rather frustrated with this bug. I never experienced it when I used CS5 or CS5.5 but now that I am using CS6 I run into this issue daily. It seems to only happen when the Layer styles panel is open and it will bring up the “community error” and launch about 20 tabs of Photoshop Help in the browser. Less often than not Photoshop Crashes, but luckily CS6 usually will bring up a recovered copy (a feature I much appreciate).

    I have not noticed any specific action that triggers the event (for example, I have the same issue with regular objects and smart objects...) but I find it happens a lot more often when the color picker comes up within the layer styles panel. At that point, Photoshop will open a new tab of “Photoshop help” every time I try to pick a color and eventually I have to just cancel out of the dialogue and try again (while praying Photoshop doesn't crash).
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    July 27, 2012
    This happens to me once in awhile too. I am running Windows 7 pro with photoshop cs5.1. I was alt-tabbing and I noticed the second time it popped up I was n't even looking at photoshop, but rather Chrome. This has been an issue since photoshop 7, either fix these bugs or stop overcharging for garbage software. I don't have a wacom.

    i7 950
    24gb ram
    Nvidia 9800 gtx
    Lynda-S
    Lynda-S
    Known Participant
    July 24, 2012
    I see this with Layer Styles much more than I do with any other area. What is interesting is that the Layer Styles had several changes with it in CS6 and now it triggers this errors much more than any other area. I have seen this happen on multiple computers with many different programs running (or not running).

    I do not believe this is related to a Wacom Tablet as I do not have one.

    To update from when I originally posted this (I was on a different system then), I am now on a system running:

    AMD FX-4100 3.6 Ghz Processor
    8GB RAM
    1TB HD
    AMD Radeon HD6670 1GB
    Windows 7 64bit

    Again I have no Wacom.

    I have recently had an error message pop up when this error happens. I will attempt to get a screenshot of this error next time.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    July 17, 2012
    Ok, just thought i would throw it out there because i noticed i hit h right after hitting enter and it happened to register a false alt key..which of course brought up the help menu, but it was lagging and i could imagine that hitting h again to verify the hand tool was active (when i was in fact in the menus) could cause some kind of problem on the backend. Thanks for your reply.

    The more i think about it you are correct because that is when i have typically experienced it also; after the layer styles menu was up and then i did something.
    Garconis
    GarconisAuthor
    Known Participant
    July 17, 2012
    I don't use any of those shortcuts. And it often doesn't happen right when the Layer Styles window opens. It's usually when I'm already in the Layer Styles window and tinkering.
    annd63484057
    annd63484057
    Participating Frequently
    July 17, 2012
    That's not really a possible cause because it happens when people do different things.

    For me it happened when I was trying to zoom.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    July 17, 2012
    I wanted to throw out a possibility for Windows users.

    I think part of the reason this may happen is because when we use shortcut keys to bring up the layer styles dialogue box or similar, we hit enter, think it should go away (like it should) and complete its task, but in the meantime, we hit "h" for pan tool.

    Not so coincidentally, this is the same as the alt+h+h key combo that would bring up the help menu, even if you disable F1.

    Maybe it gets stuck in a loop of some sort, thinks we are hitting alt and registers the help menu click. Thats not an excuse, but a possible cause.
    A
    Anonymous
    July 16, 2012
    Win CS6 x64 - began editing a gradient overlay layer effect, then photoshop crashed while attempting to launch help.

    This is actually worse than it was with CS5. Before, it would just launch repeatedly; now it crashes the entire program w/out the opportunity to save work 😞

    Garconis
    GarconisAuthor
    Known Participant
    July 13, 2012
    OK -- now I'm just pissed.

    I just installed CS6 (Design and Web Premium) on my work PC. Within 2 hours of working, I got the dreaded Community Help error. It was a wee bit different from CS5, but it still caused fatal error.

    All I was doing was applying a Color Overlay. Then it had some error about Help not working. And then what do you know, Photoshop stopped responding and required a forced close. I tried taking a screenshot, but accidentally took one of the wrong program.

    How this has gone on so long, without any recent feedback from Adobe, is just ridiculous at this point. Very disappointed.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    July 3, 2012
    Its sure interesting...not sure why a bandaid hasn't been implemented other than maybe a lot the things in PS are so optimized at the assembly level that its hard to catch those events when they go wrong.

    Surely the color picker and layer styles are not written in high level programming and neither is the way it is called.

    I know that beacuse they have almost always been pretty fast menus, even years back when my hardware was a lot slower. I would hit a couple key combos for layer styles that i used often and it wouldnt skip a beat even if the screen redraw hadnt caught up.
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