All Photos on computer locked by PhotoShop 2.0

[Gazza23]

G'Day,

I have been happily cropping and editing my photos in PS2 - until today.

I imported a photo from my mobile and tried to crop it but got the meassage that the layer is locked.

I then tried to crop a photo from the folder I have been working on and it was locked.

I disconnected the mobile phone - same result.

I turned the PC off and back on - same result.

Is this the result of some Adobe Auto-update?

Garry

[Jeff Arola]

Your using photoshop elements 2 or photoshop cs2?

What version of windows are you using?

What is the exact message your getting?

Can you post a screenshot?

Most likely it's not pse 2 that's at fault, but the Folders/Files have been locked by windows itself.

[Gazza23]

G'Day,

Thank you for the quick response.

Screenshots as requested.

I tried to crop another picture that I took last year and got the same result.

Because I had been doing this without issue until I tried to edit a picture I uploaded from my Sony mobile phone,

I presumed it was an auto-update from Adobe.

I had not considered it could be a Windows update that caused the locking of all my photos.

I looked up the PS2 Help on how to unlock the pictures but all I could find was how to Lock them.

Garry

PS2 Startup Screen

PS2 Error Message

PS2 Layers Tab

[Mark_Sand · Accepted solution]

I did this Google search on the error message. Perhaps you might find a solution there.

Google

Sometimes PSE problems pop up for no apparent reason and which are not fixed by Reset Tool. In this case, it could be that the preferences file has become corrupted.

To restore this file in PSE2, press and hold Alt-Ctrl-Shift immediately while starting PSE. The timing is critical; you may have to try this several times. A dialog box will pop up with the question "Delete the Adobe Photoshop Elements Settings file?" (or similar message depending on your PSE version).  Click  YES.

[Gazza23]

G'Day Mark,

It took a few starts to get the timing right but you had the right answer.

I can now edit my photos.

Thank You very much.

PS: The Google search you did gave an alternate way to do it, but only one picture at a time, so your suggestion is much better.

[Mark_Sand]

Garry, glad to help!

And here I thought I was the only user still on PSE2

FYI, in PSE 11 and later the preferences reset is actually built into PSE: 

Edit>Preferences>General and click "Reset Preferences on next launch".

[Gazza23]

G'Day Mark,

I spoke too soon.

I managed to edit three pictures before the issue recurred. This was just after I used the sharpen tool, which did not seem to do anything.

I have tried the Alt-Ctrl-Shift several times and it now brings up

or

So it would seem to be a timing issue with the key combination.

I will keep trying until I get the timing right and then avoid the sharpen tool and see what happens.

The reason I am using PSE2 is because Picasa is no longer supported by Google and I found an unused PSE2 disk in my cupboard.

[Jeff Arola]

How much free space does your hard drive have?

The drive pse 2 is installed on that is.

The reason i ask is pse 2 doesn't work well or at all when the free space gets near or over 1 GB.

[Gazza23]

G'Day,

Thanks for your time and suggestions.

My apologies but I re-installed PSE2 as per Mark's suggestion and it turned out to be a PEBKAC error.

I do my editing late at night and I kept using the Move tool occasionally instead of the Crop tool.

Again my apologies but I have learnt a lot about to fix issues.

Garry

[Mark_Sand]

Did you try uninstalling and reinstalling PSE?

[Gazza23]

G'Day Mark,

Thanks for your time and suggestions.

My apologies but I re-installed PSE2 as per your suggestion and it turned out to be a PEBKAC error.

I do my editing late at night and I kept using the Move tool occasionally instead of the Crop tool.

Again my apologies but I have learnt a lot about how to fix other issues.

Garry