Photoshop CS4 (64bit) - crash at startup

[Peter_L...@adobeforums.com]

OS: vista 64bit (all latest updates)
nvidia 8800gts 512 (driver 180.48)
8 gb RAM + latest mobo bios

It was working totally fine then WHAM! suddenly doesn't want to start. the 'only' thing is that the pc went into hibernation while i was at lunch a few times this week (can't see that having an effect)

I start it up and it crashes +/- after 8 seconds. EVERY time.

- Tried using the "run as admin" = didn't work (tried it just in case)

- tried changing a few settings in nvidia control panel = nada!

- once i got it open within the 8 seconds, I turned off openGL completly = nada!

- I've used the "DisallowOpenGLWindows_OFF.reg" just in case and that doesn't work either. (its a pretty recent GFX card)

all other cs4 apps (master suite) are working fine!

this exact same thing happened just before i reinstalled vista x64 about a month ago.

anyone got this problem? any solutions?

Pete

[Myle...@adobeforums.com]

Have you fully reset the prefs? Hibernation should not have any effect indeed, as the respective caches should be cleaned out every time. I'm not sure, though, if it may not cause a problem with your graphics card and screen config, which could be the issue here...

Mylenium

[Peter_L...@adobeforums.com]

Hi,

Yep tried the ctrl + alt + del at startup. worked for a bit longer but still crashes once i try to use the text tool (only the text tool with a newly created file)

[Peter_L...@adobeforums.com]

Ok I've spent the last few hours going through ALL my custom fonts and trying to find what was causing the problem.

I'm a guitarist also, and I discovered the culprit to be guitar pros "Guitar Pro 5.ttf" - must be a glyph problem in the font that photoshop couldn't handle (as i said before...no problems with the rest of my CS4)

now the weirdest thing is it only started happening yesterday. both programs have been installed side by side for over a month without issue. what gives?

photoshop SHOULD have a popup whenever this problem occurs (similar to illys missing font dialogue) for font exclusions if they stop it from running.

saying something like:
-------------------------------------------------------

"Photoshop CS4 has failed to load "name of font.ttf". Do you want to:
- Add font to exclusion list?
- uninstall the font?

-------------------------------------------------------
while I'm on the subject, is there a way to make the CS4 suite point at a font directory other than the default (C:\Windows\Fonts)?

as I don't ever use those fonts in MS office or any other program. with the BONUS of not loading all these fonts at startup.

/end of rant

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

Photoshop would say that, if we knew what kind of error that font was causing.
We test with tens of thousands of fonts, but haven't seen the exact error caused by THAT particular font.

So, we need to get a copy of that font, so we can identify the error, and make sure we clean up appropriately after similar corrupted fonts in the future. And I have no idea why it just started happening, because we don't have that font to test with.

Photoshop creates the font previews in the background after you launch Photoshop. You can turn those off in preferences if you don't want to see font previews. The downside of this is that corrupt fonts can sometimes cause "new an interesting" problems while we render the previews. So we test with as many fonts as we can get our hands on, but there are always more being made...

[Peter_L...@adobeforums.com]

understandable considering the possible variations a font could generate while being parsed.

<http://www.guitar-pro.com/en/index.php?pg=support-technical-faq>

there's a link to an updated version of the font at the above link (Q25 in fact)...but it still causes the same problem on my system (again more variables)

thanks for the reply Chris!

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

OK, I got a copy of the font, and submitted a bug report for our type folks to investigate.

In the meantime, my only suggestion is to remove that font.

[Thom...@adobeforums.com]

I get a crash on startup as well (both 32 and 64 bit versions), on Vista Ultimate x64 (Intel CPU).

I found that the last file accessed is:
c:\windows\debug\wia\wiatrace.log
and the following lines get added every time:

WIA: 2496.5176 39033385 0 0 [wiaservc.dll] ERROR: CEventNotifier::AddEventGUID, Trying to register application for a unknown global event
WIA: 2496.5176 39033385 0 0 [wiaservc.dll] ERROR: CEventNotifier::AddEventGUID, Returning failure hr = 0x80070057

but here's what's "funny":
- photoshop worked for a few days
- then it loaded and crashed a few seconds after, while loading fonts
- a few hours later, it quits instantly, nothing opens, no error message, etc; just an update in the WIA log.

The only thing I have done is remove some of the acrobat shell extensions as they are beyond invasive and totally unwelcome, I haven't touched anything else.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

You have a very, very buggy WIA (another scanner/camera acquire API) driver installed on your system.

[Willy_...@adobeforums.com]

Just wanted to report that I have the exact same problem as Peter Lancaster.
Since i have many special fonts installed, I don't have the time to check them all.
I turned the preview off. Now it works.

But I find it strange that Photoshop is unable to fix this problem. MS Word has a preview, too, and it does not crash!
There should be an update soon to address this program error.

[John Joslin]

Since i have many special fonts installed, I don't have the time to check
them all.

You mean you would rather carry on with a dodgy font on your system? 8o

Word does not use a lot of the features of fonts and is therefore not so fussy. Look at the previews side by side.

[Willy_...@adobeforums.com]

Well, I have about 400 fonts installed.
I see no possibility to check them all and I have no problem with any of them in any other program.

It can not be that a single glyph in a single font I never use in Photoshop causes Photoshop to crash.

[John Joslin]

Photoshop scans all active fonts on start up, whether you use them or not. BTW 400 is nothing: although I only activate the ones I need, some people have well over 1000 and no problems.

[Bart_...@adobeforums.com]

I have 2700+ fonts active, no problem, but then again, I keep them on a separate partition.

[John Joslin]

Bug?

[Willy_...@adobeforums.com]

Photoshop can obviously not deal with certain fonts.
This is a bug.
It may be that Photoshop has a problem with a certain font, but this should not crash the whole program!

[John Joslin]

Please consider that there are literally thousands of corrupted, poorly made, non-compliant fonts out in the wide world. Are you seriously suggesting that Photoshop should be able to deal with all that junk?

Photoshop is a professional program, and professional users use professional fonts; not some rubbish they picked up on the internet.

[Willy_...@adobeforums.com]

Yes, I expect that a professional program can deal with a corrupted font.
It should NOT crash.

[John Joslin]

I don't think you got the message.

[Bart_...@adobeforums.com]

JJ: It shouldn't crash over it, it should ignore the font and not load it, eg; remove it from the fnt.lst.

[Willy_...@adobeforums.com]

The new update says that it addresses this font problem.
Not for me.
It still crashes with font preview.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

Willy - please find the font causing the problem and send a copy of it to Adobe. We fixed the problems previously identified. And we tested with every font we could get ahold of.

So, apparently you have some version of some font that we don't have.

[Willy_...@adobeforums.com]

Chris,
this is not what I expect from a professional program!

As Bart Cross wrote:
"It shouldn't crash over it, it should ignore the font and not load it, eg; remove it from the fnt.lst."

or something like that.

This is ridiculous. The user should find the font, that is causing a problem? Out of 100s of fonts?
Come on ...

[John Joslin]

Willy,

Do you know how many 10,000s of fonts there are in circulation? And how many 1000s of these are home-made, or pirated, or corrupt?

And you expect a professional program to deal with that sort of rubbish?

This may not be the cause of your problem; it looks more like a messed up system to me.

I may be doing you an injustice but ...

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

We try to deal with all the corrupt and marginal fonts we find.
But we cannot anticipate every single possible problem (though we try), and sometimes fonts are corrupt in ways that we didn't think of.
We search the web for free fonts, and test with all the commercial fonts we can find -- but that still won't catch everything.

We had less than 15 reports of fonts causing problems with CS4 - but we fixed the bugs for the reported fonts.

It sounds like you have something else wrong on your system, or have a font corrupt in a very different way. But we aren't going to be able to fix the problem until we have the font so we can reproduce the problem. You have the font causing the problem, and we don't.

[Willy_...@adobeforums.com]

I have uploaded my fonts (except the Adobe and Windows/Office ones) here:

<http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/foto-ag/Fonts.zip>

Hope this helps.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

Willy; I downloaded the fonts. Thank you. We'll be testing them shortly (as soon as my QE partner gets back from lunch :-).

Just to confirm that fonts are the cause: could you remove all the fonts that are not Microsoft fonts, reboot, then launch Photoshop? If it works, that should confirm that the fonts are the cause.

[Adam_J...@adobeforums.com]

I just installed all the fonts you've provided and I still can't reproduce the crash.

Willy: what language of Vista are you running? (I'm assuming German, but I'd like to verify before I set up a German Vista 64 system in my lab)

thanks,
-Adam

[Willy_...@adobeforums.com]

I am running Windows XP Prof.
I have on one computer a German version and on the other an English version.
On both systems PS is crashing with Font Preview enabled.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

It is possible that one of your Microsoft or Adobe fonts is corrupt on disk and causing the crash.

[Kyoko...@adobeforums.com]

I also installed all your fonts (except 4 composite fonts) into my XP, but I could not reproduce the crash. I think I need to install GlobalMonospace, GlobalSansSerif, GlobalSerif & GlobalUserInterface composite fonts.
Willy, how did you install those fonts?

Adobe Photoshop Quality Engineer

[Willy_...@adobeforums.com]

I give up.
The solution is not to identify a certain font, but to program a work-around that hinders the program to crash!

And if it's not a font, I don't know what may cause the crash.

I only have to check "preview" and the program freezes.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

Since nobody else has your machine, or knows what it is about your system that is making Photoshop crash -- nobody else is going to be able to fix the problem for you.
Until you help us figure out why your machine crashes (and many, many others do not) - there's nothing we can do but make blind guesses as to the cause.

[Josh_W...@adobeforums.com]

Peter,

Thank you sooo much for your findings regarding the Guitar Pro 5 font!!! I just started having the same issue on two machines within the past few days; PS CS4 & Guitar Pro have been on both these systems for a long time without issue.

Adobe, please fix this. Uninstalling/reinstalling a font regularly is not a solution.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

The dot release of CS4 does fix the GuitarPro and other known font problems.

[Peter_L...@adobeforums.com]

@ Josh, glad it saved you some time!

Chris, that's great! thanks for all of your prompt replies in this matter!

[IT_...@adobeforums.com]

Hi Chris,

Our Designer Team is having lots of problems after we upgraded from CS2 to CS4. Some of the problems include:

- a dramatic slowdown in the system
- photoshop crashes minutes after opening and working on a CS2 document
- Internet Explorer does not display properly
- The search function in Windows does not work (you can only see the animated dog, but there are no search fields to input into)

We are running on XP Pro 64 bit.
Can CS2 and CS4 run in the same system? - the installation did not delete CS2

Please give me some advise, or send me some links that can help me tackle the problems.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

[Chri...@adobeforums.com]

I don't know what might be affecting Explorer or the search function.

Yes, CS2 and CS4 can coexist just fine (you can install ALL previous versions of photoshop without conflict).

Have you installed the 11.0.1 dot release? Have you updated the video card drivers?

And why did you add your question to an unrelated topic?

[Peter_L...@adobeforums.com]

- Internet Explorer does not display properly - The search function in
Windows does not work (you can only see the animated dog, but there are
no search fields to input into)

wrong forum! ;)