Expert: LizaL - 8/19/2005

Question
Hi Liza,

Thanks for your response. The message that I am getting says "Alert: You currently have Adobe Photoshop Element's Primary scratch and Windows primary paging file on the same volume"

From what I have been able to find over the internet, they are probably both set to the same thing. I read that I have to open up Photoshop and change the primary scratch volume. The problem is that the program won't open so doing that is not possible.

I have had Photoshop 7 for quite a long time and things were fine. This seems to have started for no reason at all. The night before I was using it and the next day it wouldn't load. The program starts loading and when it's done it just shuts down.

I have tried to uninstall it and reinstall it and have had the same result. I tried installing Photoshop CS and it worked. The only problem is that I'm so used to Photoshop 7 and in CS the short cut keys won't work for some reason. I am pretty dependant on them for using the program.

To answer your other questions, I have an 80 GB Hard drive with 540MB Ram. My computer itself is a bit less than half full when I check in "My Computer".

I will check out the websites you recommended. Thanks so much for your help.

Michelle


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Followup To
Question -
Hi Liza,

I was wondering if you know about how to deal with technical issues with Photoshop? My problem is with loading the program. I am getting some kind of message saying that I have a problem with my "scratch volume".

I did some troubleshooting over the internet and found out that if the scratch volume for Photoshop is the same as the scratch volume for Windows, the program won't load. I read how to change it, but the problem is that you have to have the program open to do it...which is impossible if it won't load.

I have tried to uninstall and reinstall the program to no avail. Can you tell me if you have ever had this problem?

Thanks in advance,
Michelle

Answer -
Hi Michelle,

That's true, that you have to have Photoshop installed in order to establish the program's scratch disk.

Tell me, what exactly is your error message when you try to reinstall? If I knew that, I might be able to more accurately search for an answer to your problem.

My first piece of advice to you would be to reinstall, but you say you've done that, and that's got to be pretty frustrating. So do you know if your install CD is good? Have you ever used it, successfully? I ask, because it is very possible to get a bad CD, from the factory.

Another question -- how much room do you have on your hard drive? It might be that Photoshop, upon installation, doesn't have enough room for the installation, and therefore can't allot room for a scratch volume.

I've never had this problem myself, and to be honest, haven't encountered anyone who has. It's typical to run out of memory with Photoshop, and to be curious as to what a scratch disk is, and how to assign one, but I've never heard of the problems you describe.

The only thing I can think off, right offhand, and this is pretty extreme, is to repartition your hard drive -- making sure you create a large partition for installing Photoshop. Maybe create a partition with at least 10GB, then put your operating system on another partition. When you install Photoshop, install it to the 10GB partition.

But that's pretty serious; that would involve reformatting your hard drive, and that's probably not something you'd want to do. It would, however, be a way to ensure that Photoshop is segregated to its own space, and the scratch space could be on that partition, or another partition.

Anyway, please consider the questions I've asked, and in the meantime, I'll keep searching to see if i can find someone else who's had the same issues.

Also, you might check this forum to see what you can find:
http://www.photoshop911.com/

They address scratch disks on the Adobe site(s), but just in a general way. Here are a couple of pertinent links:
http://www.adobe.co.uk/support/toptech/photoshop/311963/main.html

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/320005.html


Please post back with any additional info, and I'll do the same.

Lisa


Answer
Hi again Michelle,

Thanks for providing this extra information. The Windows paging file is an "invisible" file, one that sort of acts like a virtual catch-all for files that need more memory than you have. And it sounds like you have Windows and Photoshop on the same drive, so the paging file is conflicting with your Photoshop scratch disk.

As I mentioned, the best solution I could come up with was to repartition your hard drive. That would be the most definite way of separating the PS scratch disk from the paging file. If you do this, make sure you create one partition that's at least twice the size of the amount of installed RAM you have. In your case, this would be a partition that's at least 1080GB. But naturally you'd do that anyway; with your 80GB hard drive, you could allot 10GB to your operating system, 5GB to your paging file, 5GB as a Photoshop scratch disk, and the rest could be for programs, documents, etc., partitioned as you see fit for your working needs.

Check out these links:

http://www.planetphotoshop.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002670.html

(This next one's kind of hard to follow, but you can see the partition setup the guy's suggesting.)
http://www.guerillapixel.com/pages/digital_ill_pages/win_tuneup.htm

So it looks like this is the solution.

As for partitioning, if you've never done this before, read this:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313348

This is for XP; you didn't mention what operating system you're running, but you could search the tech docs on the Microsoft site if you're running something else.

Good luck, and please post back if you have any questions or need help.


Lisa