Expert: LizaL - 10/8/2004

Question
Hi Liza:
 I have an older version (V 4.0) of Photoshop which had been working just ducky.
  Yesterday I added another 512Mb of Memory to my Gateway P4, bring it up to over 1Gb.
  Now Photoshop will not boot.   Nor will it let me reInstall from my CD.   I keep getting insufficient memory )or RAM) messages!   Is this some variation of the "Millenium Problem", in that Photoshop can't "see" a number larger than 999 when it checks for available memory?
  What can I do about it, shy of spending the big bucks to acquire a complete V7.0 Photoshop.  (I assume it's not upgradeable?)
  Will I run into a similar problem with a newer version?
  Many thanks in advance for your help.


Answer
Hi Ed,

Well, this is a real stickler! Have you tried, or thought about trying, to do a clean boot? I'm wondering if maybe, for some reason, your PC isn't recognizing the new RAM, and is relaying that information to Photoshop, causing it to shut down. Bear in mind this is only a guess! I feel like I'd have to be there to see it, you know what I mean? Then I might be able to help more.

But the first thing I'd do is a clean boot. You probably know how to do this, but here's a link from the Microsoft site, just in case you want a reference:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;267288

I don't really think this is an issue regarding Photoshop. It sounds more like a system error to me. But your Photoshop  4.0 is upgradeable, by the way, although you really shouldn't have to do this just because you bought new RAM!

So why don't you try the clean boot, and let me know what happens? If you're still unable to run Photoshop, let me know and I'll keep working on an answer.

Lisa