P: CS6 beta crashing on my system (Win, more than 4 scratch disks)

Report · May 04, 2012

Photoshop CS6 beta is... the most unstable version of Photoshop I've used in the past ten years.

Drag and drop a file? Crash.
Export to PNG? Crash.
Use Liquify? Crash.
Use Iris Blur? Crash.
Do nothing at all? Crash for no reason at all.

And already on a big job with a VERY tight deadline, upon momentarily closing two PSDs I'd spent five hours a piece on, I tried to open the files again for comparison and they were both corrupt. I did nothing whatsoever- only saved and closed them- but Photoshop CS6 corrupted both to the point where I couldn't reopen them in any version of Photoshop. It's gotten to the point where I simply cannot use the program at all, and hope things are fixed in the actual release. Ten years I've been using Photoshop with not a single hitch, and now this beta is simply monumentally broken.

If you know ANY way to fix the stability- whether it's a reinstall or whatever- PLEASE let me know. I'm using CS5 in the meantime but I'd love to take advantage of all of the improvements in CS6.

Please help.

Report · May 07, 2012

Will do. However as it stands right now, CS6 beta is taking about five minutes to start (no exaggeration). And the Windows 7 upgrade I bought isn't backwards compatible with the Vista version I have (Vista Ultimate to 7 Home Premium doesn't work, despite what the Best Buy employee told me...), so once I can get to the store tomorrow to exchange the correct upgrade... then upgrade my OS... then uninstall CS6 and buy the retail copy... then configure my scratch disks... I'll let you know what happens when I try to save to PNG. Hahaha, it's killing me that we're apparently the only two people on the planet with such extensive issues...

Report · May 07, 2012

It shouldn't take that long to launch (normal launch is about 7 seconds, 20 on the slowest laptop we can find). The only 2 time consuming parts of the launch should be scanning for plugins and scanning for preset files.

Report · May 07, 2012

Yeah, the difference between CS5 and the beta is... large. After reading everything above, I have no doubt that the software isn't to blame, rather it's my computer. But as CS5 runs beautifully and flawlessly since the week it launched, it's just troubling that the jump from 5 to 6 has been fraught with so many problems for me, while everyone else has been enjoying it without issue. So I'll be starting from the beginning with my OS and working my way up from there, ensuring the install goes smoothly. I'll update here when it's fixed.

Report · May 07, 2012

It might be a Photoshop bug, but we still have to figure out what is different about your system to exposes the bug.

The 5 scratch disks was a big clue for the Multiplugin crashes, and we're investigating that now.

Slow startup -- we've only seen that with excessive plugin files or preset files, and some bugs in older utilities (antivirus that needed an update).

Report · May 07, 2012

Hmm. Well, plugin-wise, I'm running three from NIK Software and that's the extent of third-party software on my computer.

The startup was fine three days ago when I was running tests for my initial posting above, so whatever changed, happened in the period of time where I reinstalled the program and did not touch it for three days. Honestly, at this point I'm not even going to attempt any more fixes until I've installed Windows 7, as the culprit might be the OS alone, or that could be contributing heavily to my issues. So until I'm running 7 64-bit, spending time troubleshooting will be a waste. That sounds rude, but I don't want to waste your time if my OS is an issue. So I'll check back tomorrow hopefully, when I'm able to install Windows 7 and let you know what progress is made.

Thanks for sticking around for a solution. I'll update you when I've at least upgraded to the OS that supports the install properly. 🙂

Report · May 07, 2012

reflex7....I wouldn't be so quick to totally blame your computer, or Vista for that matter. Based on my "Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit" experiences with both the beta and newly released CS6 "final version", I'd say there's something awry with how CS6 is handling the number of chosen scratch disks.

I was under the impression a person could choose as many scratch disks as one's system setup allowed, whether that simply be one drive or a thousand. I suppose at some point there are diminishing returns on the benefits of choosing multiple drives as scratch volumes, and that Photoshop performance has more to do with overall system robustness, memory installed, RAID setup--if any, etc..

Report · May 08, 2012

We're able to reproduce this in-house (on Windows) and are currently working on trying to understand why the application is crashing. For now the workaround is to use only 4 scratch discs instead of 5 or more.

Thanks,
Adam

Report · May 13, 2012

Well. If Chris and Adam are still interested in my original complaint-- I finally upgraded to Windows 7 without uninstalling the beta, so I still have it installed without any changes made to my system since my first post (save for the OS, of course), and everything works flawlessly. Drag and drop, export to PNG, Iris blur, Liquify... perfectly and crash-free. I say that now after two minutes of testing, but this is leaps and bounds beyond what I've achieved before, so I can *confidently* say that Windows Vista was the culprit in my own particular case. My scratch disks are still at four, but to be honest I don't need my smaller HDs to act as scratch, so I won't dabble with any potential problems that may present me. For now, I'm just happy I'm not part of the tiny group of users with issues. :)

Thanks for the help, Chris Cox. And RMM, from first impressions alone, the OS was the issue and I'm right as rain.

Thanks again!

Report · May 18, 2012

I'm having the same problem exporting PNGs and I'm on a Mac running the most current OSX. I had no problem with CS3 and then upgraded to 5.5 last week and it kept crashing on export for web... I upgraded to CS6 2 days ago hoping it would fix it and now I can't export for web at all without crashing. tried PNG-24 - crash, tried PNG-8 - crash, tried GIF - crash! I've been sending the reports to Adobe but have had no response

Report · May 19, 2012

Brenna, I wonder if your problem is with the CS updating. Did you (or could you on OSX?) update an existing CS version or remove it completely and then install the new version? On my PC I sometimes find it best to remove the old version first and clear out its files including settings/preferences. Installing the new version then requires you to enter the old vers serial number first of course. I did this when going from CS5.5 and CS6 Beta to CS6 retail to get a clean install.

Just a possibility unless there really is something in CS6 that is faulty for some systems and not for others.

Report · May 19, 2012

MacOS does not have the same limitation for the number of scratch volumes.

You're looking at something else.

And we have very, very few crashes for SFW or the file formats. The few I've seen resulted from someone loading CS5 plugins into CS6 by mistake.

Report · May 19, 2012

Oh, if you crash in the save dialog (not while writing the file), then you may be hitting one of the MacOS file system bugs (FinderKit), or the open/save dialog UI bugs (appKit). Running Repair in DiskUtility usually solves the FinderKit problems, but there are no known workarounds for the bugs in AppKit. We've sent those crash reports to Apple and are waiting for OS bug fixes.

Report · May 19, 2012

it's crashing in the save dialog. I'll run repair in disk utility and delete the CS 5.5. do I need to reinstall CS6 after I delete CS5.5? does deleting it work or do I have to figure out how to uninstall?

Report · May 19, 2012

I uninstalled CS5, reinstalled CS6 and ran disk repair... didn't fix it. so, basically I can't use Photoshop CS6 if I want to SFW?

Report · May 19, 2012

The version of Photoshop doesn't matter - you appear to be crashing in MacOS code, and that could affect any application.

Report · May 23, 2012

I've had a similar issue with CS6/Bridge. Here's what I've found so far.

If I start my computer (Win7 64 bit) and load CS6/Bridge, it works fine. If I close CS6/Bridge to do something else and then attempt to reload CS6/Bridge, it loads CS6 but freezes when trying to load Bridge. I've found two temporary workarounds.

1) Cold reboot the computer and all is OK.

2) If you are trying to re-load CS6/Bridge on a computer without rebooting, you can open the Windows Task Manager - Processes tab and you'll see that Bridge is still loaded. For some reason, when you close CS6, Bridge is not unloaded from the OS. Terminate the Bridge process in Task Manager and CS6/Bridge will load and run normally.

I think there may be a lot of 'red herrings' in the above posts that are off track. Try this and see what happens.

Report · May 23, 2012

This topic is discussing a specific problem with Photoshop - not Bridge. Please create a new topic to discuss your problem in Bridge.

Report · Oct 23, 2012

This issue should be fixed in the 13.0.1 update: http://adobe.ly/PS-Up-To-Date

Report · Oct 23, 2012

BTW - Apple believes they have fixed these issues in MacOS 10.8.2.

P: CS6 beta crashing on my system (Win, more than 4 scratch disks)

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