Photoshop CS 2 crashing... can anyone help?

Question

Hi all, I have read through the forums and found a few threads that had some ideas in it, most notably repairing my disk persmissions, which I did. I could not find the "photoshop preferences" to delete them like someone suggested.
However I still get random crashes, and by crash I mean, no spinning beach ball, just POOF! Gone! No "do you want to reopen" window, just gone!
I am thinking I may try and install the CS3 trial to see if that helps, 'cause at this point I am having to save after every action so I don't lose anything! I am using my powerbook more since photoshop doesn't crash on it!
Would it help to re-install? I am at my wits end, I spent 4500 dollars on a machine that won't run my primary program!
I would really appreciate any help anyone can suggest. Thanks!
2.66 Mac Pro; Powerbook G4 17in   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Answer 1

There are or have been a number of threads on CS2 as well as systems being unstable.
From how you setup your system, to what you installed, and whether you imported or used Migration Assistant (a real no-no in general when coming from a PPC, reinstall your applications) and there are some plug-ins that won't work.
Memory, testing and having adequate or more, testing your disk drive. Permissions are helpful when installing or if not launching maybe, but otherwise, not going to cure a crash.
I would erase and zero a drive (new, test drive) and only install Apple and bare essentials. No frills. Test one thing at a time as you add, and backup "as needed" so you have a "restore point" in time.
If you think it is the 'puter, run Apple Hardware Test. If you haven't, run Memtest overnight or in multiple windows, or from Applejack (AJ is helpful to have installed to clean things up, repair drives, delete cache files - oh, and deleting cache files/folders is helpful and should probably be done before any OS update, along with repairing your disks for directory problems (Disk Warrior 4 is excellent in this department for keeping disk drives running healthy).
CS3 lacks the free memory caching capability of CS2 which helps a lot when working on files of over 500-1500MB. If CS2 is your primary application, then hopefully now that prices for memory have dropped to $700 for 4GB good time to invest in more.
And you might want to expand your hardware ".sig" to include more details.... how much memory or 3rd party.
One last, anything in the panic or system.logs?
Message was edited by: The hatter