dreamweaver cs4 crashes constantly

[sandthipe]

previously used dreamweaver 8 on this same computer with no major headaches. upgraded to dreamweaver cs4, and I get crashes all the time. no pattern to the crashes.

sometimes, adding a new folder to the site will cause it to crash (but not always).

sometimes trying to navigate the remote site will cause dreamweaver cs4 to crash.

sometimes looking at the screen will cause it to crash.

anyone else having the same sorts of trouble? i might be ready to switch to zend studio.

[Guest]

Welcome to the club! I do hope you enjoy our company as we all sit here waiting for Adobe to make a presence in this forum. Actually, we've all given up hope on Adobe addressing these issues, or even addressing us in any way shape or form.

We all know that the ftp engine in Dreamweaver sucks beyond all belief. I continue to have crashes on a daily basis. In fact, every single time I use Dreamweaver it crashes. I'v figured out ways to minimize it though. One thing you can do is keep your ftp connection alive. Save a file often with "upload on save" checked as an option in the preferences. When I'm coding I'll often do saves, like once a minute, so that the ftp doesn't die on me and cause a hang. If I forget and leave DW open for awhile, when you close and it tries to interact with the server, hit "cancel". It will abort attempts to talk to the server and close without crashing.

Good luck, and God speed, whatever that means. Welcome to the "Dreamweaver crashes often and Adobe doesn't care" club. The more the merrier.

[yabbox]

Happy Christmas!

In between Christmas and New Year and I'm working to get my work live before the deadline.  I'm getting on well, speeding through, then I need to search through the document tree to find a file name ...  oops. Yes, of course, I forget to Ctrl S for a few minutes as I routinely do and crash, bang, wallop, the whole tree collapses, falls through the windows and I get a thud on the head like a wife coming home to find her husband covorting in the bedroom.

I quickly 'print screen' so I have a visual memory of what I've just done, but the tricky bit was just off the screen.

I saved the error report, for what its worth. attached.

Give me another mince pie and a large brandy.

[mhollis55]

Boy, am I glad I didn't upgrade to CS4.

At the time, I couldn't because CS4 applications needed an Apple G5 or better, so I upgraded to CS3 just after the CS4 release (there was still lots of CS3 in the channel).

I realize this doesn't help anyone, but I wonder if one couldn't just use one's previous version, assuming one had it.

[Ben M]

mhollis55 wrote:

Boy, am I glad I didn't upgrade to CS4.

At the time, I couldn't because CS4 applications needed an Apple G5 or better, so I upgraded to CS3 just after the CS4 release (there was still lots of CS3 in the channel).

I realize this doesn't help anyone, but I wonder if one couldn't just use one's previous version, assuming one had it.

I don't believe anyone in this post has a problem with the Mac version.  If I am not mistaken the problem here is with the Windows build.  Personally I've had CS4 running on a MBP with Snow Leopard with 0 issues.  And I have a copy at work on an old XP SP3 machine that it runs just fine on without any crashes.  And there are others here from previous posts who have not had issues which suggests something that is localized to people in a particular situation.  This has been discussed mutliple times within the post and it doesn't help the posters at all, but that is the state of the issue without a resolution for those that have it.

[Guest]

It very much depends on what you are doing to provoke the crash. If I start DW and just stare at the screen, it's rock solid! Likewise, if I don't interact with a server or use a "Remote Server" setup, it's mainly fine.

ps: Do a quick google for: dw cs4 mac crash

[BizarroB]

I am experiencing this as well on a brand new XP SP3 box connecting to Contribute (Check in/out enabled, obv). DW keeps crashing when I try to move a file, access a directory, burp or blow my nose. I am amazed that there as been so many months since this thread began and there is not definitive solution from Adobe! Come on Adobe, get with it!!

[gribblethwaite]

I'm trialling CS4 - I've been using GoLive for years. I've had three crashes today, one bluescreened my W7 laptop, the others I managed to close DW between screen flashes and stop the damage before it fell over. So I'm currently thinking that I'll probably stay with GoLive - the whole template and asset thing is MILES and MILES better than DW.

I love the "probably answered" tag at the top of this discussion!

[Guest]

Hi guys/gals

We were sick of this issue at the company I work at and we now have a much better and robust solution in place.

We have registered with a website called Springloops (www.springloops.com) for SVN functionality, to manage our repositories of projects and websites and use a Windows program called TortoiseSVN to commit/rollback/update changes to those repos. It's fantastic and a far better solution than DW offers with the check-in/out. TortoiseSVN puts little icons against your files in Windows to indicate ones that have changed etc.

Having experienced what this setup can do in terms of commenting changes to your files, rolling back, deploying and all the nice things than SVN offers I would strongly recommend taking the time to look in to it. The benefit of using Springloops is that you don't have to setup SVN on your server and manage that, it's all done for you in a web based system. I think you can have up to 10 sites for free managed by them, but we are more than happy to pay for this service.

The good news is, you can use any program to make changes to your website files, even DW if you prefer. As you're not using DW's "remote" system feature of course it won't crash every 5 minutes.

I know many users here use a Mac and TortoiseSVN isn't an option. A quick google search brings up this project http://scplugin.tigris.org/ that might be a viable alternative.

[BizarroB]

That solution might well work for a small company without an IT department but most companies, small or large, with an IT staff would not allow for a 3rd party repository to host their files. If your company has a Windows 2003 Server or Linux-based server in-house, SVN is easy enough to get up and running, even on IIS.

Bottom line, Adobe needs to back the product it assumed ownership of when it took over Macromedia. They replaced GoLive with it because it was a superior product. It clearly appears to be an FTP related problem and should be easy enough for the masterminds at Adobe to correct with a patch.

GET ON IT ADOBE!!

[Guest]

The point is, you're wasting your time trying to get Dreamweaver fixed. The answer is to find an alternative solution like we have.

No response from Adobe in a year on the open support ticket, no updates, no answers to threads. It's not going to happen.

IMO DW isn't the tool for the job. It's buggy. CS4 looks exactly the same as CS3 but with more bugs a new splash screen. Even though DW has SVN support built in as well as it's own check in/out system, I'd rather use almost anything else to do the job.

[Guest]

Couldn't agree more. I can only imagine that one day some poor schmuck will get hired as a product manager for Adobe, and be told to go deal with Dreamweaver. Only then will someone at Adobe actually find this thread, and all the open tickets. Nobody at Adobe is reading this crap, and there is no plan to fix it.

By the way, I tried the check in/check out,and sync stuff in DW recently, and it's total crap. Totally unreliable. Reall though, a class action law suit is in order for all of us that paid for the entire create suite, only to get s**t on by Adobe, repeatedly. I will not be buying CS5 anything, not Photoshop, not Lightroom. No way.

[SmilingBearCrT]

I have DW CS4 and it was crashing so often I was ready to chuck my computer out the window.  Sometimes it was crashing twice in 20 minutes.  The crashes were costing me too much time.  After reading through all of the discussion you were having on this topic, I decided to turn the Check In / Check Out off.  That was about three weeks ago and DW hasn't crashed since.  I realize this isn't practical for everyone, but for me it was so worth not having that extra stress from the crashes.  So, if you can do without it, uncheck the Enable Check In / Check Out.  It worked for me, I hope it can work for you.

[hideto]

Any news on this?!

I've been having the same problem for a while..

[Guest]

Adobe has never responded to this thread, ever. CS5 is out now, and I suspect they will never answer questions about CS4 now. But I doubt seriously these flaws were addressed in CS5, or I think Adobe would have had something to say in this thread about improved performance in the next version.

I suspect that there's not much difference between DW CS4 and DW CS5. They upgraded PS and Flash and took the other apps for the upgrade ride. Good luck.

[ITC2]

I've been using CS5 on both my PCS for nearly two weeks now and have not crashed. Unfortunately, it appears Adobe waited to fix the bug in the new release.

[gribblethwaite]

Just upgraded to CS5 then crossgraded to Mac today and I haven't had a chance to find out if the problem is here as well. BUT - I turned off check in/out a few weeks ago and Dreamweaver never fell over again. I'm pretty sure it was whenever the mouse went near the bottom right corner so the comments about updating the file list seem intelligent to me.

I'm absolutely hornswaggled that there is no comment from Adobe in this thread - what on earth are they doing? With any luck turning Dreamweaver into something as good as GoLive was, but I doubt it.

Onwards and upwards...

[supert3d20100715]

I would also like to join the dozens of people whose DW CS4 just dies un-gracefully every 5 seconds. I can't "Check-Out" files more than twice before CS4 blows up on me.

I've tried all the usual tricks. Config' files, win.cache files. I even went as far as deleteing the ENTIRE Configuration folder. Yet CS4 CONTINUES to crash around my ears every other file.

I'm a PHP developer, I need an IDE that works. We're looking at new IDE's and I gotta' be honest DW isn't in my favor right now.

If anyone ever figures out why and what will resolve the crashing please reply. Until then I've gotta' resort to notepad++ and FileZilla.

[Guest]

Simple. Don't use DW's "Remote Site" facility. Work locally in DW and use a proper SVN solution like TortoiseSVN (Windows) and Springloops (online SVN hosting)/your own SVN server. It doesn't matter what IDE you use then.

I've been using DW "locally" and this cured the issue. It still crashes every now and then. Usually when I'm editing CSS files.

[ITC2]

Adobe will not fix this in CS4 as the bug was addressed in CS5. I use it and never crashes. Adobe want you to pay for a fix by upgrading.

[Guest]

Interesting that you say this is fixed in CS5. From experience I'd have expected the only thing to change between versions to be the splash screen.

Does that mean this was a recognised and acknowledged issue? Does it appear in any release notes or changelogs?

I for one won't be putting any more money Adobe's way anyway, not for Nightmare Knitter in any case.

They never did get back to me on the support ticket or letter I wrote them. Useless.

[BizarroB]

I found that by disabling Cache in the Site Manager, I no longer suffer the crashing problem. Also, disabled Check In/Check Out. Temporary fix for CS4. Adobe definitely needs to address this issue. With Cache on, I was crashing on .swf and .js files. Hope that helps.

[ITC2]

Hi Jamie, it's an issue that I've never read mention of by Adobe. To me, it's very frustrating to keep upgrading to overcome bugs and then have to get used to the new UI, most of which is not an improvment. They've forced us to keep consuming their product in this way instead of adding real value.

[ITC2]

Hi Jamie - Now have been using CS5 for about a month. It still crashes, not as frequently, perhaps once a week but oddly in the same way, during ftp usage. otherwise, still many of the old bugs and issues remain. Not a very compelling upgrade.

[mhollis55]

OK, this is not an FTP bug, this is a sync bug. FTP works just fine and always has with CS3 and everyone with CS4 and CS5 that I have spoken with says FTP works just fine, assuming you are configured correctly for your server.

The issue happens when you Enable file check in and check out. This is completely unnecessary in the work I do, as I'm the only person editing the website. But for collaborative environments, you either must enable this or you must (before you start editing anything) download the entire website to your local machine, do your edits and then upload to server. And everyone else in the group must know that you have the latest copy and not do any editing on the website while one person works on his or her portion (unless everyone else sends that person all of their edits).

And that, in workgroups, sounds to me like it could be a real headache.

So, perhaps the proper thing to do is to use something other than Dreamweaver to keep people synced locally and on the server. Now, I realize this suggests that companies spend more money after purchasing Dreamweaver and Dreamweaver is supposed to work correctly. But it's a solution for the nonce.

In the meantime, before Adobe gets too far along on CS6, we need to pester them.

[Guest]

Pester Adobe? You are kidding right? Have you seen how old this thread is? I've got a support ticket open as old as this thread that was eventually ignored and closed, which was the same response I had with the letter I sent them.  I don't agree with your diagnosis regarding FTP and stand by my original conclusion that applies to me. Having a remote site enabled causes the crashing.  I don't use this part of the software in favour of a proper SVN solution.