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

[Garconis]

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...

[Garconis]

Just made that change. I'll let you know if it still (somehow) pops open.

[J453]

Great. Thanks.

[Garconis]

After changing the Community Help to open in a browser instead, I still have this problem. I was changing a color with the picker, and all of a sudden two tabs opened in my default browser (Chrome).

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop... That is the URL that opened.

[J453]

OK. Thanks for the update.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

One other comment: I've never seen this happen on a Mac. Has anyone else seen it on a Mac?

[AboutaDirk]

Happened to me on multiple systems, all with different software installed (CS 4, 5, 6) and always in Photoshop.

I've had it on Dell laptops, normal desktop systems, etc.

When you live in Photoshop (work, 50% of my time is spent in Photoshop) it's just something you learn to live with.

Sometimes help opens repeatedly, and you have about 4 to 20 windows open at once. Sometimes just once. I just always hope it's not more often than that because I've had computer crashes on lesser systems due to this issue.

As stated before, it seems to happen a lot when you're going into the Layer Styles panel, but I've also had it happen during other actions, mostly related to the Layers panel, I believe.

Perhaps it's got something to do with holding certain keys down while clicking in the layers panel. The reasoning behind that being that not everyone seems to have this issue, and I'd like to think after about 8 years of Photoshopping daily I'm a bit too fast for my own good sometimes ;)

Hope this can be fixed some day.

[J453]

Curious if people have been using the Photoshop CS6 beta, or recently release Photoshop CS6 (available as a trial on adobe.com)

We changed the way that help works in CS6, so I'm wondering if anyone can still reproduce this in CS6.

[Garconis]

Supply me with a full copy and I'd be willing to test this. 😉

[J453]

Here you go: http://www.adobe.com/downloads/

Good for 30-days. 🙂

[JWebby]

I can confirm that CS6 has this problem too. I was changing the color on a text layer and up pops two browser windows: http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/topi...

[Guest]

*sigh*

I was really hoping this was gone for good. I'm downloading the released Photoshop CS6 now - is there anything helpful we can provide if/when we reproduce it? Logs or something?

[JWebby]

Jerry,
Is there an XML file or something that we could remove that link from?

Back in the CS2-CS3 days I would delete the help folder. Not a good solution but made it tolerable.

[JWebby]

And why can't I login to these forums, everytime I have to request a password reset request, then I can login.

[PECourtejoie]

Some customers still have the issue in CS6: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4408460 and with the Beta: http://forums.adobe.com/message/43236...

[PECourtejoie]

Unfortunately, Jeffrey, some customers still experience the issue in CS6: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4408460 and with the Beta: http://forums.adobe.com/message/43236...

[Lynda-S]

I have had this happen and I will provide as much information as possible here.

This has happened in CS5 but I do not remember what triggered it though I do remember there were times it seemed to happen by itself after extensive usage. In CS6 I have had it open once 15 tabs the second time 3 tabs in the browser all of help. The first time this happened I had some error message pop-up about an error with the help. The second time I did not have the error message pop-up. I cannot replicate this every time but when I double click a layer to open layer styles is when I have seen this error happen to me. It has happened in the CS6 Trial Version (not the beta). I am not 100% sure but I do believe it was after using PS for a bit before I saw the error. Here is some information on my system:

An Alienware Area 51 (please note this is an original Alienware, not a Dell made Alienware)
Intel Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz
3GB Ram (if it matters 2 of those sticks are Kingston RAM as someone mentioned above about Kingston RAM)
Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 3)
ATI Radeon HD 3600 Series 1GB (Using the latest Catalyst available not 11.8 as Noel mentioned)
I do NOT have a Wacom and never have had one (though I want > )
Normally I will have Thunderbird (version 3 - 13), Firefox (version 3 - 13), Photoshop (CS5 and CS6), Dreamweaver (CS5 and CS6), Bridge (CS5 and CS6), running when this error happens. There are times when a few more programs might be running.

And before anyone says anything, Yes I know this is an old computer but for a computer that is almost 10 years old it has preformed very, very, well!

Please let me know if more info is needed.

Note: I originally posted this on the Adobe PS Forums here: http://forums.adobe.com/message/44078... and was directed here.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

So...no solution to this yet?

I've been having this same issue in CS4 and all when I'm doing different things, so it can't be linked to a shortcut. I usually get a lot of pop ups and when I try to close the effects editor or whichever other dialogue box I may have open in Photoshop, they just continue to pop up. I am now in CS6 and have noticed the same exact thing when I was trying to apply a motion blur. When I clicked OK on the blur editor, the pop ups began. Every time I tried to click cancel to exit the blur editor more pop ups came up.

[BumbleBritches57]

First time I saw this error was today, and I was using the Color Picker, messing around with gradients when it happened! I'm on Photoshop CS6 x64 Windows 7 SP1 x64

[BumbleBritches57]

Yes, I just had it on CS6, Photoshop x64, It's been open for ~3-4 hours, and it opened SO many tabs, Chrome crashed, then did it all over again crashing Chrome a second time, I just saved all my stuff and shut Photoshop down, hopefully it won't happen again.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Yes. I too have this problem and have experienced it with every version that has ever had an online help system attached to the f1 help shortcut. I find that it occurs most often in the color picker dialogue and/or the color picker dialogue as a sub dialogue to the gradient tools. I am currently using CS6 on a 64 bit win7 machine with an intos 4 tablet. I too suspected either the tablet and long click holds with modifiers(alt,ctrl, shift) either with the pen or mouse as it has occured with both instruments.
I wonder if it might be a conflict with the keyboard and mouse accessibility "helpers" built into windows itself.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

happened to me when i was adjusting a curve in the curve adjustment layer

[annd63484057]

This just started happening to me using the Ctrl+Spacebar zoom option... every time I click to zoom it opens a new help tab in my browser (by the time I realized it crashed my browser!)

On a brand new computer 64 bit windows 7.
Photoshop CS5.
No tablet installed, just keyboard and mouse.

Edit: Restarting PS did fix it.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Ive been having this issue as well. Glad to know I`m not alone here!

When I go to pick a color out, rather than click each pixel until I get it just right, I keep my cursor sliding across the gradients which I suppose counts as 'holding the mouse down'.
I do use a tablet, though I cannot go back to a previous driver since my tablet won't work then. It's a very fussy piece of equipment that refuses to function without the latest drivers.
The last time this happened, I was on CS6 with my tablet, I went to select a color from the pallet, and a TON of help windows opened. It took a few minutes to close them all (I'm used to this happening by now), but even when they were all gone, I could not select any colors. It just kept beeping as it would if you were to try and click something while there was an error message up (yet no message was there). I was forced to reboot Photoshop (thank god for file recovery!) before it would work again. A few minutes later, it did it again.
I have tried setting it to open in browser rather than plague me with windows, but then it will open so many tabs that It spans into a single line of tiny x's across the top of my browser.

This seems to have a very wide range of triggers. If anyone has a solid fix, that would be great. Until then, I guess I just keep rebooting! >_<

[JFlemingFBCZ]

PROBLEM DETAIL:
The help pop up occurs in more than one situation - often with the color picker open like mentioned above, and today I noticed that it doesn't like me to take my time resizing an object with the shift or ctrl button down. Today this occurred when I copied a vector image from illustrator, pasted it into Photoshop as a smart object, attempted to scale it down by click/drag and holding shift. At least ten of those help windows popped up in my browser (Firefox) while I had the mouse button and the shift button down. Photoshop has been open for more than two hours.

SYSTEM DETAILS:
Dell model XPS 8300
Intel (R) Core i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
8.00 GB of RAM
64-bit, Windows 7 Professional

Photoshop Extended CS4 (from the Design Web & Premium package). I have both the 64 and the 32 bit programs installed on my system.
I have several non-default layer style packs, brushes, patterns, gradients, actions installed - most from various free internet sources.
I have on occasion reassigned my shortcuts. I reassigned F1 to see if maybe it had something to do with that.

I do have a Wacom Bamboo CTH-460 installed, but it is not in use (read "not plugged in").

Don't have filezilla or Google talk installed. I do have "Ghostery" installed in my firefox web browser - I rarely (if ever) use windows internet explorer.

Usually if I restart Photoshop after a few hours, this happens less regularly, but doesn't clear up entirely.

Good luck Adobe guys - I hope one of the next few updates will take care of this for us loyal Adobe customers.

[Noel Carboni]

I hope one of the next few updates will take care of this for us loyal Adobe customers.

Doesn't seem likely. They haven't a clue what causes it.

And with good reason - it's likeliy general corruption of the application's memory space that's causing it. How do you program defensively against that?

-Noel