TIF thumbnails initially populate, but turn 80% black when I "Open With PS"

Question

I'm scanning photographs with a relatively-new Epson 10000XL scanner. I save the scans as ~300MB TIFs, copy the entire folder, then crop the copies with Photoshop CS5 12.0.3 on a Win XP 2.2GHz Pentium Dual Core CPU with 3.25GB RAM. The crop goes fine and the the save seems to go fine. Filesize of all cropped files is consistent. A few days later, I notice the image is 80-90% black, with only the top strip OK. This happens to about 15% of the images I've scanned. The original scans are always OK, so I think I can rule out the scanner. The cropped image thumbnails look good in Bridge, but when I right click and "Open with PS", the thumbnail turns 80% black and an 80% black TIF shows up in Photoshop...baffling. Sometimes half the image is black, but usually it is mostly black. Always, it is the bottom area of the image that is black. I can rescan and recrop the image, but a 15% rescan rate at 6-7 min/scan is killing me. What the devil is causing this? Is this a hardware issue, and if so, is it a RAM deficiency? Defective RAM? Defective hard drive? Conflicting software? Whimpy graphics card? Something else?

Answer 1

Replies to Curt and Omke:
In original post you said you were running Win XP, so it that home computer and work is Win7?
Work PC = Win XP, Photoshop CS5, Dual-core processor and 4 GB RAM. Home PC = Win7, Photoshop 5.0, Quad-core processor and 4GB RAM. Both are 32-bit OS. I cropped and saved 20 of these TIFs on the home Win7 machine, and had no problems with black images at any time. I tested those same TIFs on a work machine that is identical to my Win XP work machine, and had lots of problems with them turning black. This suggests that the OS, video card and/or CPU are causing trouble on the work machine, not necessarily the RAM. It doens't seem to be a problem unique to my PC, but rather to all the PCs that are just like my PC (our organization buys in bulk, and we all have identical PC setups).
Most likely it is the RAM.  With a 64 bit machine you are really handicapping yourself with 4 gigs.  You also need a good deal of space on the scratch disk, so make sure you have ample free space.
I have 62GB out of 150GB free on C drive, but it’s fragmented. Will try defragmenting to see if that helps. I think, with my 32-bit Win XP, I am limited to 4GB, right? Does a 64-bit system have that much improvement over 32-bit?
Graphics card is the other likely suspect.
On the work PC that is causing me trouble, graphics card= ATI Radeon HD 3450.
In Bridge go to advanced preferneces and check "use software rendering".  That will help if graphics card is underpowered.
That will help with what, exactly? Will that help avoid corrupted files? It seems like the problem lies in Photoshop, not necessarily with Bridge.
In photoshop go the edit/kpreferences/file handling and make sure Open GL is not checked.
It was checked. I unchecked it, but still had images turning black on me when I cropped and saved them.
Your files are still OK, they only show not good in Bridge? or are they all damaged?
~15% of cropped scan tifs open mostly black in PS and Windows Explorer, and open mostly black in Bridge full-screen preview also. The other 85% look OK in all programs. The 15% initially look OK as thumbnails in Bridge, but after ~30 min, or if I try to open them in PS or full-screen preview, they turn mostly black. It would appear to me that those 15% of cropped scan files are corrupt, and perhaps only look OK in Bridge initially because Bridge is accessing some embedded low-resolution preview, then later updating the preview using the actual image file, but I’m not sure on that last point.
You state to have PS 12.0.3 in, while I'm on a Mac I have 12.0.4 installed s the latest so first try a software update.
That’s a pretty involved process with our IT dept. I don’t have Admin privileges to do that, but I’ll raise the issue.
Also check your PS performance settings. If you have only 4 GB RAM installed and you did point PS to more then the default and having some other applications open you will become soon short of RAM. (Bridge pointed to that already)
This is a point of confusion for me. PC specs list 3.25GB RAM, but in PS prefs, “Available RAM: 1691MB, of which 71% (1201 MB) is allowed for PS use. I would think PS would at least recognize all the PC RAM as available, but this is also the general trend on my home PC where PS doesn't recognize all the RAm that Windows does...must be a distinction between total RAM and available RAM.
In Bridge Prefs the default setting for maximum file size to build HQ preview is 1GB. Could you check if this is also your case?
Yes, that is the case.
And I also agree with Curt that if you have multiple files open with that size your machine specs should be above average, and you should have at least 10 % free space on your HD.
I’m running at about 50% free HD space, though fragemented. I would like to make some sort of recommendation to IT about a system upgrade, and it seems like a better processor is a key factor, followed by the OS and graphics card. Without going to a 64-bit system, I believe I'm maxed out on RAM, but correct me if I'm wrong. Our organization prefers everyone to be on the same OS, which is why we're all still on WinXP.