Stop the Internal Error Message in CS4 or CS3
sspoerke
many people using Fireworks - the error message that wouldn't allow me to save
anything. Luckily, I paid attention in class long enough to at least know to
save my work often, so I didn't lose much - just a basic wireframe that I threw
together in 15 minutes or so. Thankfully, I tried saving when I did or this
would probably be a very tearful night for me. Instead, it's just a long night.
I can deal with that.
But, before I pat my iMac on the top of it's screen and say "goodnight" I
wanted to share with you the secret to "fixing" the error message. Hopefully
this will help those poor souls in the future who need a little guidance from
someone who's been there, done that, and is too tired to design the t-shirt.
This method will also work on Windows machines.
I'm not saying this is guaranteed to work for you, but I'm telling you it's
worth a shot. It only requires a little of your time to do and will hopefully
be the fix you need. If it's not, please accept my sincerest understanding of
your frustration and try another method. This fix suggests that you have added,
removed, or relocated fonts on your computer since the last time Fireworks
worked properly, however, even if you haven't done any of those things I'd
still recommend giving this a try. Here's what you do:
1. Open your favorite font manager software. I prefer the pre-installed Font
Book on the Mac, but you can use any font manager that you want. Some good
commercial font management programs for Mac include, MasterJuggler, Suitcase
Fusion, FontAgent Pro, and Font Explorer X. For Windows you might want to try,
Font Fitting Room, X-Fonter, Suitcase for Windows, OT1 Font Manager by J M
Berthier, MainType, FontExplorer for Windows, Printer?s Apprentice, FontAgent
Pro for Windows, Typograf, or FontExpert. Those are in no particular order,
just in case you were wondering.
2. select all of your installed fonts - including your system fonts. Run your
"validate font" command for the font management program you're using. Sit back
and let it work. I had more than 6,000 fonts on my Mac, so it took a few
minutes to run through all of them.
3. Your font management program should let you know which, if any, of your
fonts are corrupt, duplicates, or otherwise dead-weight. Chances are there will
be a few if you're getting the internal error message at start-up or save with
Fireworks. You need to delete or at least remove these fonts from the fonts
folder. I had, and I'm ashamed of this, 256 duplicates and 135 dead fonts on my
poor computer. But, in my own defense, I did just reinstall many of the fonts a
few days ago and was planning to gradually work through them to pull out the
dead/unwanted ones. I should have done that before putting them to disc last
time, but no... I wasn't thinking.
4. once you have the fonts removed/deleted that produced errors or warnings
during the scan with your font management program you might want to run the
scan one more time just to be sure you got everything out. If everything looks
good, you can now quit/exit the font manager.
5. here's where things will seriously divide for Windows users and Mac users.
Therefore, I'm not going to fully explain where you need to go or how to get
there for this step, but I will provide the basics. On your computer, you need
to find the folders for fireworks that contain your preferences for the program
(hint, look in the user's appdata folders, which is hidden, for Windows or the
user's Library for Mac). Inside the preferences folder you'll find a file that
houses a list of fonts, probably called fontlist or something very similar.
Delete it. You might also wish to delete the cache for the program preferences.
Those need to be regenerated in order for this to work.
6. Find your computer's font cache while you're looking through the massive
amounts of folders and delete the file there too for a little added security
that this will work.
7. restart your computer.
8. open Fireworks and create a new file. Save that file to your computer in
whatever format you want.
If the program opened, the file saved, and you didn't receive that same old
error message, congratulations, it worked! You may have to re-establish your
preference settings, but you shouldn't have any other problems.
That is the best I can do this evening... or morning I suppose it would be.
Best of luck to you!
-Skip
steve81
Thanks,
Stephen
sspoerke
The problem could be any one of numerous issues. To best troubleshoot it you
might want to start with reinstalling the program. That should repair any
administrative problems with the program files if there are any. If you're on a
Mac you can also try running disk utility to fix administrative problems.
If that doesn't work, verify that all of your installed fonts are not corrupt
using a font manager of your choice. Depending on how many fonts you have, this
could take a while. Then, go into the folders containing the program
preferences and delete the font list and cache. See step 5, that I described in
the original post. Restart your computer and try opening Fireworks again.
If you still can't open the program, the best solution I know of is to
completely remove the program from your system and rebuild it with a fresh
reinstall.
You can download the Adobe Clean Script to make sure you remove all files. The
links are below.
CS4: http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs4clean.html
CS3: http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs3clean.html
Please post the fix you use as a reply to this message for others to see.
Good luck!
-Skip
djbroklee
font manager even though i don't go big on fonts,cleared cahces,did
regedits,you name it.
the fight continues.
as far as support from adobe they pretty much don't care they got my thousands
already this quarter.
i'm thinking about a system restore now, pretty much lost out on those last
two days of pay and now that today is about over i have nothing to lose if i
can't get it fixed.
anyone have any ideas out there?
it's too bad i committed to adobe before accepting these adobe type jobs.
worst case i'll do the work on mirage until i can finally get the quick
background drop of fireworks again.
i didn't pay thousands but it has never even hiccupped no matter scripts or
tasks i crammed into it.
this fireworks issue sort of thing is what put me off adobe in 2000, no
support for issues,and wonky worksmanship.
anyone have the answer thow it over to me,i could surely use the catch up on
getting paid thing right about now.
Dooza
An update is being made to address some major problems, if you hold
tight you might find a solution soon.
Dooza
--
Posting Guidelines
http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/guidelines.html
How To Ask Smart Questions
http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
How To Report A Bug To Adobe
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform