Clone tool crashes

In both Photoshop 7 and Elements 2 running under Windows XP my machine hangs after a few clicks with the clone tool. Has anyone else had the same problem? And if so, is there a solution?

just off the top of my head I would say it's a bad pref file....

try holding Ctrl+Shift+Alt+W while PS starts up, you'll be prompted to trash your prefs file.... then try your clone tool again..

if that doesn't do it... you might look at how much memory is dedicated to PS.... orrrrr ummm, possibly a scratch disk issue...

anyway, try that... holler back and let us know

Thanks Lion.

Trashing the prefs has helped to speed up loading, but the clone tool problem remains.

I've got over 400Mb of memory available for Photoshop. My scratch disk is a partitioned D: drive sharing the same physical drive as C: - but I've also tried using C: as a scratch disk. Perhaps it doesn't like the partitioned drive, but surely I can't be the only person using Photoshop with a partition?

No you are surely not the only person using a partitioned drive to make a scratch.


Lets see,

1) does the clone tool crash you on just a certain image? If so, how large is it (MB)?

2)on ANY image? If yes, forget question 1

3)with 400MB dedicated to photoshop what does that leave for the rest of the system? or what % of your total memory is the 400MB

4)Are other programs running when you encounter the clone tool crash?

lastly, have you downloaded the 7.01 patch?

While you answer those I'll do a little digging.

1. n/a

2. Yes. Any image I've tried, which so far has been a series of scans from black and white negatives. Photoshop handles the scanning comfortably. Resizing, Mode changes and zooming in and out are all OK.

3. The 400Mb is 70% of the total.

4. It crashes when no other programs are running.

On the adobe forums I found a few things but nothing specific to your problem. IF you haven't downloaded the 7.01 patch, you should. After reading I found a few similar situations that only happened on win XP and only happened when the memory allocation was higher than 60%. Soooo, I would suggest lowering your memory dedication and see if the problem still happens.

Also I found a reference to a similar problem after win XP users installed Wacom pallets. So, you might look into if you have installed anything new before this started happening.

Thanks for all your assistance. I'll go get the patch and reduce my memory allocation.