[Strange] Photoshop 7 - CTRL+Q trashes program?

[DoorKnobHandle]

Technical help needed again, sorry guys.

This is really strange, I have used PS 7 since years and it always worked fine.

Today I start it up, accidentally hit CTRL+Q and it just disappears (I checked, it quit really quickly, the task was gone as well in the task-manager, so it was really gone, not just minimized etc), I find that strange, am not really sure what happened, so I start it up again, wait until it's started up completely (after the splash-screen disappears etc) and hit CTRL+Q again and it really works again. PS quits.

Allright, no problem. But whenever I try to start it now, it quits instantly while the splash-screen is still showing. Can't access the program at all. ImageReady still works, but when I try to jump from IR to PS, it says "Can't jump to PS because it doesn't respond".

What is up with that? I find it heavily strange to have such an instant-quit hotkey in the first place, but how can it ruin the program in that way?

I already tried a restart, didn't change a thing.

[Khris]

Instant quit is pretty normal behaviour I'd say, at least when there aren't any open documents. You won't lose anything and those "Are you sure you want to quit?" windows really bug me, so that suits me perfectly.

Check the file menu, at the bottom next to "Exit" it says "Ctrl+Q".

Concerning PS not starting up anymore: reinstall it.

[cobra79]

I don't believe that CRTL-Q can mess up Photoshop. Tried it twice, still works.
For me this looks like you have a serious hardware issue. My guess would be the RAM. I once had a defect module and Windows booted sometimes and sometimes it did not. When it booted it worked a while and crashed later. For starters you could try to increase the latency and lower the frequency of your RAM in the bios (maybe it is overheating?). If this does not solve the problem I would say you should try another RAM module.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Hmm... I don't know... My RAM messing with only Photoshop? Because I do CPU intense stuff with it just fine (like audio recordings etc).

EDIT: And about the RAM-thought: it worked perfectly even today. I really set it off by pressing that button twice (or it was really, really bad timing).

I will try to reinstall.

@Krishmuc: sure, that might be usable, but imagine creating a new file entering dimensions etc., then wanting to select all (CTRL+A) but by accident hitting one row above A -> Q. Bam, it exits. And this is what happened to me and there was no box asking for confirmation for some reason.

[zabnat]

I once spend half a day reinstalling photoshop because it always freezed when trying to start it. And the problem was I had a printer, that was not available set as default printer. I even did this twice and on the second time when I realised it was the same problem wanted to bang my head very hard on the wall. It might not be related to your problem, but is worth a check. Otherwise the only problem I've had with photoshop is that sometimes it loses my settings somewhere. Also if reinstall doesn't work, try deleting all the settings for photoshop (it doesn't delete them when uninstalling IIRC) an then reinstalling.

[Fee]

Works fine for me with Photoshop7

Ctrl Q does make it instant quit, but it opens fine still. I dunno what the problem there is. Just try to reinstall. Pergaps the installation is damaged. Its possible (however unlikely) that photoshop was doing somthing with its own files as you made it quit and never finished. Seems very unlikely tho...

[DoorKnobHandle]

Hmm... Reinstalling is not an option. I legally have Photoshop 5 LE, but I needed some functions for .tif-files for an important project and couldn't afford Photoshop 7 at all (which is still what I'm using *hint*). I hope you can understand this and not think of me as a dirty thief for all eternity...

I still don't believe it's RAM, because how could it just make one single program quit on startup? That seems very illogical too me, first of all, it would freeze the computer and not quit a single program - or am I misunderstand something here? And, as I said, it started doing this in the exact same moment I discovered that ctrl+q-shortcut, and now it quits in a very same way.

A further hint: it always quits while displaying: "initializing color preferences" in the splash-window. Don't know if that's really the cause, because it might just be the last line before really starting up etc., but that's the last thing I can read. A millisecond after displaying that line, it just vanishes.

Any help is immensely appreciated! I really need .tif-files with alpha-channels, and I don't know any other way of getting those without Photoshop (not even ImageReady can do that, which - as I said - still works). A project depends on this.

[CodeJunkie]

I don't know what the Photoshop folder looks like, but try having a look through the config files (.ini, .cfg etc, anything < 10k).  There might be something obvious there you can fiddle with, or you could try getting someone to send you their configs and swap them over.  Failing that, rename or move your configs, PS may create new default ones that don't cause it to crash.  Check also any log files, they may tell you why it crashes.  Don't forget to check your C:\Windows and Documents and Settings\[path to PS] folder for PS files as well.

[cobra79]

If it is not the RAM, than maybe it is the swap-file. Check if you have enough space on your swap-file partition. Photoshop does not delete temp files if it crashes so maybe it does not have enough space to load.
It generally is also a good idea to not have Photoshop and the swap-file on the same partition. Also don't let Windows handle it but allocate about twice as much disk space as you have RAM, by manually entering a constant variable in the minimum and maximum windows.

EDIT: constant variable..umm : --> a constant

[DoorKnobHandle]

YES!!

Thanks guys. I had already tampered with various config-files in the ps-directory, but that didn't help, tried to let ps create new ones (didn't help) and there were no log-files.


Now I have gone to the Settings and Documents folder for Photoshop and deleted those default files and now it works!

But honestly, Photoshop is programmed extremely weakly if hitting ctrl+q while it loads and messes with those default files (I guess) corrupts those files and really - in a way - trashes your copy of the program. Also, that it doesn't give you an error or creates a log-file telling you what's wrong is ridiculously bad - especially considering the image and price for the tool. That's a joke.

Thanks a lot, lot, lot!