How can I prevent Bridge from altering my photos?

Question

HELP!!!
Within the past few days my Bridge CS4 program has been making my life miserable. I had been utilizing the program to batch photos from my extensive photo library, rename them, sort them (i.e., change sort/ordinal number), and the like without any difficulty and then suddenly, after executing such processes my thumbnails turned completely white and would not open in Bridge, Photoshop CS4 Extended - much less anything else. I tried reopening them as .jpg's, .psd's, .tiff's to no avail. I went into properties on each photo and checked the "open with" tab, and it noted that the photo was not recognized. I had some moderate success opening them with Quicktime Picture Viewer, but converting them back to a Bridge readable format (i.e., their original state) proved impossible. Having noticed that Quicktime had hijacked nearly my entire photo opening process, I uninstalled it in the hope that it would solve the problem. It didn't. I then went into Bridge and Photoshop CS4 preferences to try and modify how photos were opened, and couldn't seem to find anything applicable. I did, however, increase the memory and cache allocated to each program substantially.
Last night I ran into more problems with Bridge. While scanning both photo negatives and prints into Bridge and saving them into various files, I encountered the same problem indicated in paragraph one. I tried scanning several of them a second time and succeeded; however, I had to save them to a different file and give them dissimilar names in .tiff format. In the process I found more than a dozen ways to spell "Mexico," "Tokyo," and "Ukraine"! They would not save as .jpg's or .psd's.
I use Windows Vista Home Premium SP1, have a Pentium 4 Dual Core (2.8) processor, 4 GB Memory, Nvidia GE Force 7600 video card (yes, the drivers are up to date), and Hewlett Packard Photosmart C7180 and C7280 printers for scanning. All of the photos involved are stored on a Maxtor One Touch 1TB Turbo auxillary hard drive.
Also, could anyone suggest how I can get the  SD/MMC card reader on my PC to work?
Thanks to any and all for assisting me with my problem.
Wolfgang Holst
Big Bear Lake, CA

Answer 1

Thank you curt y for your quick response. I have seen your recommendations on the adobe forums link in the past and many of your solutions
seem to have helped other people with Bridge problems. I took your suggestion and gave it a whirl - all preferences were restored to defaults - and the problem continues. I get the feeling the problems lies with the program's interaction with Windows.
Having tried a few more things, I've found that I can move the photo shell (the inscription underneath the thumbnail states, "Window Shell Common") to my desktop and open it there with Photoshop (i.e., going through the song and dance of "open with" and clicking on the CS4 icon, where it opens up in RAW). I must then move it over to Photoshop CS4 and save it as a .jpg or a .psd. Unfortunately, after all this it still won't open in Bridge. By all appearances, Bridge somehow has become corrupted and I'm probably going to have to do a complete Photoshop CS4 uninstall and reinstall.
I've spent hundreds - if not thousands - of hours scanning into my system some 10,000 photographs of my travels (yes, they are backed up on discs), and Bridge should not be negatively impacting my ability to organize and manipulation them as is happening now. If the uninstall/reinstall does not resolve the problem, I'll be back on this forum for more suggestions.
As for the card reader issue, I'm well aware of the 2GB/over 2GB issue. I typically use a 4GB or more card in my camera. I can download fine through my HP 7180 and 7280 card readers, but my HP 1518n card reader is a different story. I'll work a little more on it, too.
Thanks again.
Wolfgang Holst
Big Bear Lake, CA    
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:49:46 -0600
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: How can I prevent Bridge from altering my photos?
Have you tried resetting your preferences by holding down the Ctrl key and starting Bridge?  You will get a reset window, choose all 3 options.
The only thing I know about card readers is that there are 2 versions.  One for cards of 2 gigs or less, and one for HD cards over 2 gigs.  Make sure card and reader match.
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