CGTalk - Strange freeze

Datameister

01-25-2006, 06:06 AM

All right...I've already posted this issue on two other boards, and I'm hoping I'll find more help here than I did there. I'm having a strange freeze-up problem while painting in CS2. I have an Intuos3 tablet with up-to-date drivers, and this freeze-up occurs in the middle of a brush stroke. Typically, I've been painting for a few minutes, often with this one custom brush I use a lot. Then a stroke will simply stop appearing halfway through. I can still move the cursor at this point, but it disappears if I move it out of the document's window. On rare occasions, Photoshop will "catch up" with the brush stroke a few minutes later, and everything will be back to normal. But typically I have to close the program by pressing the X at the upper right, losing any work I've done since my last save.

I'm running CS2 on a relatively slow Windows XP machine (about 1 GHz! :eek: ), and this problem has become more frequent lately. It used to only occur once in a while, but now it seems to be occurring every time I paint for a few minutes. I'd really like to get it fixed soon so that I can stop disturbing my "creative flow"...

The nice thing about a sheet of paper is that it will never freeze, crash, or perform an illegal operation.

desmondying

01-25-2006, 06:49 AM

your machine may be underpowered. I tried using PS7 using a PII:eek:, on a large canvas, photoshop will stutter as I paint with my intuos2, the brush strokes lag behind the cursor. sometimes it will only update the stroke on the canvas after I paint it.

If you have multiple Hard Disks or partitions, try setting the scratch disk to a fast and relatively clean drive. Defrag, add more ram etc...

does the problem occur on a small canvas (eg. 800x600) with small brush strokes?

Datameister

01-25-2006, 03:43 PM

Thanks for the reply. I have a feeling this has to do with my computer's deficiencies in speed and memory, but I'm not sure.

The problem seems unrelated to brush size, which is strange--sometimes, the freeze occurs while I'm working with a pretty small brush. My canvases rarely get huge; I've had the freezing problem even on canvases only a little bigger than what you're talking about. Weird, huh?

Would the fact that I've only got a total of 512 MB of RAM have something to do with it? That's my gut instinct...

halo

01-25-2006, 05:36 PM

depends on how large the image you're working on is...512 is bare minumum really.

it could be symptomatic of a hardware problem or a driver issue...tricky to say when your running it under those conditions.

what size image?

Datameister

01-25-2006, 10:11 PM

Okay, I've now had the problem with a 760x660 document when using medium-small brushes...

halo

01-26-2006, 11:36 AM

could be hardware/driver then...or if its just a lag your running out of ram...check your memory figures as your doing the work and see what the scratch is using on your info area.

archerion

01-27-2006, 03:34 AM

sounds like, processor speed and memory mostly memory..

halo

01-27-2006, 11:13 AM

lack of memory shouldnt make it crash unless it ran out of scratch as well...but it will make it lag.

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01-27-2006, 11:13 AM

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