Help: Photoshop running slow

Hello.
I've been searching around the internet for an answer to my problem, but have yet to find it. Well to begin lets start with my setup, I have an:
Acer Aspire M5201
4GB of RAM
500GB HD (Separated into a C: and D: Drive, each drive has over 100GB Free)
AMD Phenom 8400 Triple-core processor
ATI Radeon HD3200
Windows Vista 64bit
Adobe Photoshop CS3

Not the best setup, I admit, nevertheless it is new, and because it is new, just makes my problem even more frustrating. I've been using Photoshop for about a month now on my new computer, and I began to notice a problem. Whenever I would open a new image up with the default "White" background, it would open fine. And if I drew directly on the "Background" Layer there would be no problem. The problem is whenever I create a new layer, even if it's just 1 layer other than the "Background" layer, photoshop would start to lag. The most noticeable part was that all brushstrokes had a 3-4 second delay. I use a Wacom Intuos3 and whenever I would lift the pen off of the tablet and start a new stroke, it would lag. However, If I just left the pen on and continued drawing it would be fine. I thought it was my tablet, so I tried it out with my mouse and the same issued occurred. Also, If I start a new image with a transparent background, the same issue would occur even if there was only 1 layer, and the problem happens no matter what the image size is. Also, I read about the printer bug thing, and I've only connected one printer to my computer, never unplugged it since then, and it is not a network printer. I've also designated both my C: and D: drives as scratch disks, increased the amount of RAM photoshop can access, decreased the amount of image caching to 3, as well as turned off thumbnails in my palettes and none of it worked. So I'm completely stumped here. Please, can someone, anyone help me out?

k4ge77 said:

Hello.
I've been searching around the internet for an answer to my problem, but have yet to find it. Well to begin lets start with my setup, I have an:
Acer Aspire M5201
4GB of RAM
500GB HD (Separated into a C: and D: Drive, each drive has over 100GB Free)
AMD Phenom 8400 Triple-core processor
ATI Radeon HD3200
Windows Vista 64bit
Adobe Photoshop CS3

Not the best setup, I admit, nevertheless it is new, and because it is new, just makes my problem even more frustrating. I've been using Photoshop for about a month now on my new computer, and I began to notice a problem. Whenever I would open a new image up with the default "White" background, it would open fine. And if I drew directly on the "Background" Layer there would be no problem. The problem is whenever I create a new layer, even if it's just 1 layer other than the "Background" layer, photoshop would start to lag. The most noticeable part was that all brushstrokes had a 3-4 second delay. I use a Wacom Intuos3 and whenever I would lift the pen off of the tablet and start a new stroke, it would lag. However, If I just left the pen on and continued drawing it would be fine. I thought it was my tablet, so I tried it out with my mouse and the same issued occurred. Also, If I start a new image with a transparent background, the same issue would occur even if there was only 1 layer, and the problem happens no matter what the image size is. Also, I read about the printer bug thing, and I've only connected one printer to my computer, never unplugged it since then, and it is not a network printer. I've also designated both my C: and D: drives as scratch disks, increased the amount of RAM photoshop can access, decreased the amount of image caching to 3, as well as turned off thumbnails in my palettes and none of it worked. So I'm completely stumped here. Please, can someone, anyone help me out?

In situations like these, I would uninstall Photoshop, run CS3 cleaner, then reinstall Photoshop. Perhaps even upgrade to CS4 if you know how to obtain/purchase it

a few more details on your settings would be a help, but :

1) 4GB of RAM is good, but there is a limit to what you can usefully allocate to PS (at least, my CS2 has ~ someone else w/ CS3 might be able to advise on this). i have 2GB, but anything more than about 65/70% allocation to PS is detrimental to performance and sometimes causes filters to crash.
2) if C drive is where your OpSys is, putting a Scratch here is not a good idea. Put PS on a separate drive/partition, and put your Scratches on yet other drives/partitions.
3) check what other applications you have running at the same time; turn off anything unnecessary.

not sure about Vista i'm afraid, i've heard it has several undesirable features when it comes to hogging memory and performance, i'm sticking w/ XP myself.

thanks for the advice, its still hapening even after everything so I'll probably end up just getting CS4, I mean Christmas is coming up soon lol