Photoshop Keeps Freezing

For nearly a month my computer was just freezing randomly. I ran everything from anti-spy to virus etc... It wouldn't freeze in safe mode though. Finally someone advised me to try a new video card. I tried a new one and everything seemed to work fine. I had used one from a friends computer so I gave it back and bought a new one a NVIDIA GeFORCE FX 5500. I thought my problems were over. I reinstalled everything because I had formatted when first trying to solve the problem. Everything on here works now except for Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop freezes randomly at no particular task just everytime I use it. I have reinstalled several times and I'm using the same CD to install from that had been on my computer for over a year before formatting. I have two physical drives and I have tried it on each. I downloaded the newest version of Photoshop from Adobe's Website and same thing happens. In addition I have updated the drivers for the video card, done a windows update, ran msconfig and disabled all my startup items and rebooted in VGA mode and reinstalled photoshop as suggested on Adobes site. Same thing. If anyone has any additional idea I'm all ears. Thanks!!

Can you post more specs on your computer, such as RAM, HD, & Processor sizes, please?

ok Specs are
Windows XP Media Center Edition Service Pak 1
Intel Pentium III processor
999 MHz
640 MB of RAM
2 Physical HD's C: 27.9 GB with 18.2 used and 9.69 Free
E: 37.2 GB 24.3 used 12.8 Free

Assuming we're talkin about PhotoshopCS here, that 999MhZ sticks out in my head as a suspect. Pentium III or 4 is a sys requirement for the software, so I would say you're barely sliding through. Have you tried letting the computer sit for a bit while it was 'frozen' and not touching a single thing to see if it was actually processing? Once the buffer gets backed up, if you were to keep trying to min/max, press keys, task mgr, then you could be freezing it mid-process.

well originally I reinstalled Photoshop 7 which is what I had been running on here for about a year. It wasn't working so I then downloaded CS and same thing. I am now back to 7. As far letting it run after it freezes I have sat there and let it go as long as 30 mins and no change. I look to see if the little red light on the pc which indicates something is processing flickers and it never does. I have to end up hitting reset because nothing responds on computer no Ctrl + Alt + Del nothing.

My best guess is that your CPU is being maxed. Don't have a clue what you're trying to do in PS, but a freeze like that is because something is maxing your CPU to nearly 100%. It may be another proggy (or a trojan or spyware) Before you open photoshop, open task manager and note what is using your CPU and how much. Then open PS and see what it does.

I can try that but what about the fact that it does the same thing in safe mode and when I went into msconfig and disabled all startup items??

Like I said, it may be a trojan. It also depends on what you are trying to do in PS. does it lock up immediately upon opening, or only after you are trying to do something? Try my suggestion about task manager and actually see what's going on and report back.

Ok, as far as what I'm doing in PS when it freezes it runs the board. I can be cropping an image, adding a layer style etc.. last freeze I right clicked a layer hit copy layer style and it froze.

As asked I ran task manager and it shows CPU Usage fluctuating between 3-5%. I loaded photoshop and the same was true 3-5% Usuage. There were 48 process running and all appear to be ok but I'm no expert in that so I made a screen cap of how the task manager looked before I run photoshop and after. Because of the amount of process running I had to made 2 caps of it each time so I could scroll down and get it all in 2nd cap.

Before Photoshop
http://www.tulsaimagery.com/screencap1.JPG
http://www.tulsaimagery.com/screencap2.JPG

After Photoshop loaded
http://www.tulsaimagery.com/PSscreencap1.JPG
http://www.tulsaimagery.com/PSscreencap2.JPG

I don't see any really obvious signs of a trojan, but you do have a lot of things going on in the background. I can't say for sure if that's your exact problem, but if you take your task manager list and do a Google search for each executable file and help you identify them. Then you can use that information to remove or reduce the number. For example, the Kodak updater service simply doesn't need to run. In fact I hate that program and have no plans to ever install it again. (It normally comes bundled with printer packages and most people don't ever use it). I have had it cause me several problems in the past with system performance. I can see several processes running that are simply not critical. I won't be so bold as to tell you which ones you perceive to be critical, but getting rid of as many non-critical ones as posible may help.

man - realplayer, windows messenger, - check all the stuf on ur taskbar and exit them or terminate them in taskmgr. u dont need em to run when ur using photoshop (well except windows messenger, if it cant be helped) and i have no idea what backWeb is, and i doubt u need audio deck running too. atno's right make sure u know the proggys running to be safe, and then terminate them accordingly to make ur pc run fine.

I had - and still have - a pIII 600mhz 128mb ram intel graphics controller 64 meg...i had photoshop on it too but it worked fine...strange...built a new pc recently, loads better....

I searched my items in the task manager and couldn't find any that appeared to be suspicious. I ended task on as many of the files as I possibly could and PS still was freezing. I decided to just go ahead and do a format to try and resolve it. I have two physical drives C and F. I transferred everything I needed off of C to F unplugged F from the computer rebooted off my XP CD formatted and reinstalled. After I got everything back up and running I plugged F drive back in and installed PS form there. That was the only thing I installed and now PS freezes everytime I try and open a file. I ran chkdsk on both drives and even unplugged F so that C was the only drive running and PS is the only thing installed on there and a PSD file I had backed up to F that I transferred over. Same thing happens just freezes everytime. I even took out my video card and replaced with a friends this afternoon to see if my new card was causing the error....same thing. I am running out of ideas. Any more suggestions?? Thanks for all the help so far.

very strange - i was thinking a corrupted vers. of photoshop, but u say it works fine in safe mode. have u tried another copy of photoshop?

actually it doesnt work in SafeMode either. I have tried downloading a new copy of PS and it did the same thing. Very Strange indeed

This seems to be a known issue at Adobe. I've been doing some checking and found the following at Adobe's forums:

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx ... 2@.ef47fb1
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/327708.html

Not encouraging news, but I hope it helps. Looks like you need to look beyond the software.