Paintshop Pro X7 crashes

[chrisnd]

Hi, I recently decided to upgrade my ageing copy of Paintshop Pro 8 to the new X7 version.
The main reason for doing this was a problem in version 8 when cropping an image (or specifically when dragging a selection to crop) that the program would crash. This did not always occur - just enough times to be irritating. So, the upgrade went fine and the program ran perfectly at first but then I started to get crashes. These have become more and more frequent and, unlike the version 8 crashes which were somewhat predictable, the crashes in version X7 occur seemingly at random.

The more crashes I get, the more it seems I have wasted my money and should have stuck with ver 8!

Please advise.

Chris
(Windows 7 on a Celeron laptop, 2GB memory and 250GB HDD)

[hartpaul]

Because you are getting the crashes with two versions of PSP one by Jasc and the other by Corel, I would suspect that something has changed with your system that is causing these crashes rather than with PSP/
I am running PSP 8, X2-X7 on Windows Home Premium with no problems. You may need to repair your XP or if not possible, upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8. My versions of PSP all work well on Win 7 and on Win 8.1.
Looking forward soon to testing them on Win 10.

[chrisnd]

Thanks hartpaul, but I am already running win7 n this laptop. Previously with XP (on a different laptop) there was no problem. An intermediate foray into vista (yet another laptop) had similar problems to win7 (but not so severe). At this point an informed colleague advised it was a windows shell issue with the older versions of PSP - hence my choosing to upgrade.

You are correct in that I am running two versions of PSP currently. The old v8 still works the same as it always has (in XP SP2 compatibility mode incidentally - it don't work in SP3!). The newer X7 is deteriorating in its usability.

Maybe you are correct in hinting that running the two versions together is a bad idea - especially with my earlier problems. I am loth to remove both and start again without some good reason to do so as I have several special functions set up in v8 which would be tedious to rebuild.
Or were you suggesting some compatibility mode tweaks for X7?

Cheers

Chris D

[chrisnd]

Ok, I've made a little progress. The crashes ONLY occur when I am in 'manage' mode. They now coccur within one minute of that mode being selected. (When the program was first installed back in May they hardly ever occured. Maybe because I was always switching modes?

As a 'work around', and acting on a comment in another thread, I have selected the option to always start the program in 'edit' mode. This obviously makes things usable to some extent but as I have always used the management/browse mode extensively it is far from satisfactory!

Any ideas please?

Chris D

[Jean-Luc]

This obviously makes things usable to some extent but as I have always used the management/browse mode extensively it is far from satisfactory!
Any ideas please?

Chris D

Could be the cache file or the Organizer database corrupted ?

[MarkZ]

It seems to me that some time ago someone was having a problem and it turned out to be a corrupted file in one of the directories that PSP accessed.

I'm not sure if this is the case but I think that if you select folders for use in Collections in Manage mode the program looks at those and ignores other folders in Computer. Are the folders you normally use in Collections? You may try having very few folders in Collections, use Manage and see if crashes still occur. Perhaps have folders in there one at a time and see if that makes a difference.

[chrisnd]

Thanks for the responses.
I think you are right about it being to do with cataloging.
I set all the folders in 'collections' to 'do not catalog' and there was no crash in the 20 mins I left it.
I recataloged the 'desktop' folder and a crash followed within a couple of minutes.

So any ideas how to fix this?

TIA, Chris

[hartpaul]

Set up a TEST folder in some other area apart from your desktop. Move all your folders icons shortcuts etc apart from the default ones and PSP icon to that folder . This folder should not be cataloged. Now it becomes a detective game to locate which file(s) are causing the crash. My Manage shows jpg and pdf files but it may be one of those is causing problems. Do you have bmps, tifs or other files there.
Unless others can repeat the circumstances leading to your crashes it is a bit difficult find a solution.


Open PSP and catalog your almost empty desktop (perhaps place one jpg there so it will show up.)
Then sort the files in the TEST folder and move all the jpgs back to the desktop and again see if it catalogs OK without crashing.
Continue adding different groups of files til you find which set of files starts the crashing.

I started with PSP 8 which did not have a Manage mode. Then X2 - X3 and continued to use what was later Edit mode even though it had an Express Lab, Organiser and Phototray with options of adding other trays. So I have had no problems running PSP8 , X2-X3, and X4-X7 in Edit mode.
In the later versions I have set

[MarkZ]

Thanks for the responses.
I think you are right about it being to do with cataloging.
I set all the folders in 'collections' to 'do not catalog' and there was no crash in the 20 mins I left it.
I recataloged the 'desktop' folder and a crash followed within a couple of minutes.

So any ideas how to fix this?

TIA, Chris

It is not clear to me what you have in Collections - have you included "My Pictures" or only a few of the folders within My Pictures?

Again, I'm not sure if PSP catalogues only everything in Collections or stuff outside that as well. I would assume it looks only at Collections (to save computing effort), so I would suggest that in Collections you place only a few folders (start with one?) and take out My Pictures; I have only a half dozen, some with sub-folders, in mine. You may not need to include anything in "do not catalog". If you do not experience a crash with one or a few folders in Collections, continue to add or substitute other folders over time and see which causes the crash.

[chrisnd]

Thanks for responses on this.
The result is basically a 'work-around' by choosing the 'do not catalog' options by right clicking a folder.

This has to be done quickly (ie before a crash!) and is far from ideal.
In my last post I mentioned that the desktop was one folder that caused crashes. I change the desktop content frequently (in fact all that ever stays there for more than a few days are links) so I don't know why this is a problem.

I was expecting it to be my CorelDraw folder that would create problems - as it always did with PSP 8 - however I am now in an 'if it ain't broke don't fiddle with it' mindset and at least I am able to work with this again.

So, the bottom line of course is that there still seems to be something within the program that isn't what it ought to be!

Thanks again, Chris D