Photoshop CS4 is a disaster

Lawrence,
It is been 3 years since I chose a xp pro retail over OEM. It is good that Microsoft has since given 2 free calls for OEM. Maybe the shop owner who told me this was wrong? Anyways....

Thanks for the info update :)

i I believe that detailing the HW/driver configurations that failed and the one that succeeded would be of great help to the Engineers at Adobe.

Outrageous! We do what for people earning $30-$50+ an hour to do this?

I do software validation for a major silicon manufacturer. No way will I do this stuff for free.

i Gets worse if you build a system and buy a OEM disk. It may be cheaper however you are now the owner and troubleshooter. Microsoft won't help you. Buy regular retail and microsoft will help you.

Not true. I have a sample copy of XP Pro and I recently was told I had 2 free help calls, of which I promptly used one. No matter. The advice was bogus and I had to solve it on my own, and actually, with a comment here in these forums concerning a specific AV and their "extra added features".

Ivan,

Office 2007 was my 1st install after ps cs4. No problems what so ever.

Also I noticed you had a wacom listed. I just read in another thread where someone installed new x64 drivers from the wacom website and they they work.

Glad to hear Microsoft will help people will Dell OEM. I remember 4 years ago when I had a Dell and called Microsoft support they refered me to Dell.

iVan,

Not sure when (read as if) you sleep

Following you thread, I cant quite piece-together exactly what HW and SW configurations you built.

It appears that some combinations of video card/driver and motherboard failed, and you worked to get one HW config to succeed. And at this point, you are tweaking the SW install? Forgive me if I have this wrong, because it sounds like a lot of work I believe that detailing the HW/driver configurations that failed and the one that succeeded would be of great help to the Engineers at Adobe.

Also, many motherboards have tuning options. For instance, I could not use hyper threading for a six months because my graphics card freaked-out. I believe one poster also mentioned memory tuning options.

One other thing, do you have any fancy disk interface cards. Both my SCSI and FC cards have independent BIOS code that interferes with some motherboard operations. These BIOSs had to be jumpered-out to increase my system stability.

Get some sleep,

Hugh

Definitely Nero 8. It can play havoc with many things. Try it first.

Nero
Kaspersky
Office
Spyder Pro
Diskkeeper
DNG
APC 1500
Garmin
All browsers

Wacom Tablet
Kasperski
Google Earth
IE

Highly appreciate your efforts!!
Erbs

And my DX diag. to complete the picture:

Time of this report: 12/4/2008, 15:20:20
Machine name: ACERASPIRE9920G
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.080917-1612)
Language: German (Regional Setting: German)
System Manufacturer: Acer
System Model: Aspire 9920
BIOS: Ver 1.00PARTTBLt
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7700 @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 3070MB RAM
Page File: 1438MB used, 16534MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 6.00.6001.18000 32bit Unicode
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 8600M GT
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0407&SUBSYS_01291025&REV_A1
Display Memory: 1779 MB
Dedicated Memory: 499 MB
Shared Memory: 1279 MB
Current Mode: 1680 x 1050 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: PnP-Monitor (Standard)
Driver Name: nvd3dum.dll,nvwgf2um.dll
Driver Version: 7.15.0011.8070 (English)
DDI Version: 10
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 11/18/2008 13:28:00, 6062080 bytes

As a matter of fact, why dont I get a show of hands to see which software should I try first. Any of you with the slow Photoshop use any of the following? Im curious to see if there is a something that shows up with consistency across the board:

Acronis True Image v.11 (Im currently running it from a boot disc, so its not installed yet)
Wacom tablet
Nero 8
Kaspersky anti-virus
Google Earth
Office 2007
Audacity
Daemon Tools 4 lite (64)
Spyder Pro3
Diskkeeper 2008
Efficient WMA MP3 converter
DNG converter
HP Photosmart printer D7260
Logiteck quickcam
TeamViewer
APC uninterrupted power supply ES 750
WinRAR 3.something
Garmin Mapsource
And several browsers (IE, Netscape, Opera, Safari and Firefox)

I dont recall what versions were for most of these programs, and I may have missed a few, but its a start.

There's job for you in San Jose!