CS Vaporizes 40 Meg PSD – computer still smoking

L
Posted By
larry
Feb 21, 2004
Views
1318
Replies
50
Status
Closed
Major bug in Photoshop CS and was repeatable.

My partner opened a 40 megabyte layered PSD that had been sized to 13×19 to make an ink jet print. He proceeded to select the background layer and add a single pixel stroke to see where to trim the print. Upon trying to save, he got a message telling him the file was locked and to go to Win Explorer to unlock it in the file properties. Obviously the file wasn’t locked so he tried to just close it without saving the changes. POOF, it no longer existed on his hard drive. It wasn’t in it’s folder in Win Explorer and the Open Recent listed it but couldn’t find it. After closing Photoshop it was no longer listed in Open Recent either.

Tried a second file and everything worked OK. He was able to add a stroke and save it for printing.

Tried a third file and POOF, it also disappeared without a trace.

Larry Berman

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MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 21, 2004
I must say I thought when I read this post this morning that you must have been missing something although I’ve seen some of your posts before and I know you are an experienced user. Now I’ve just had the very same thing happen. I’ve never seem anything like this before. Weird.

I was re-saving over a file which I had been working on and which had doubled in file size (see my posts in buggiest version ever thread) to bring it down to normal. I got a message saying the file is locked and couldn’t be saved. I had Win Explorer open on my other monitor and, having read your post earlier, I had a look and the file had completely disappeared. I saved under a different name which worked so I didn’t lose my work.

The orignal file has definitely vanished from my hard drive. Really weird.
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 21, 2004
do you guys still have 7 or 6 on your systems? that "unable to save" behaviour is the trademark of the original psicon.dll problem and the main reason it was removed in CS.
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 21, 2004
Yes Dave. I still have PS6 and psicon.dll is still there. I recall seeing a few posts about this and I was wondering if there was a relationship when I saw the message. I’ll uninstall it now and see if this happens again but considering it never happened before I could be waiting some time for anything definitive.

Did this psicon problem actually result in the file disappearing though?
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 21, 2004
i’ve only seen it once on my machine.

Did this psicon problem actually result in the file disappearing though?

not usually, but i could see where it could happen if the dll released or grabbed the lock at exactly the right time (ie just as ps was attempting to write to the file).
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 21, 2004
Interesting. I’ve just uninstalled PS6 and it’s left psicon.dll behind but the Explorer thumbnails no longer work so I presume it’s removed the registry entries which make it work.
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 21, 2004
yes, you need the reg entries if you want it to work. if you’re losing work though, i’d say you’re better off without it.
L
larry
Feb 22, 2004
Just getting back on line after driving all day.

The psicon.dll issue might relate to files appearing locked, but there is no excuse for files to totally disappear from the computer under any conditions that could be related to using Photoshop. That and the fact that anyone upgrading from a recent previous version of Photoshop is going to leave the older version on the computer.

This is one of those issues that will give CS a bad reputation and should be fixed in the point upgrade when it becomes available.

Larry Berman
ND
Nick_Decker
Feb 22, 2004
They better not require me to delete previous versions, because I’m depending on PS 7.01 in my daily work, while waiting for PS CS to get fixed.
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 22, 2004
This is one of those issues that will give CS a bad reputation

they removed psicon in cs for just that reason. and i explained HOW it could happen.

They better not require me to delete previous versions, because I’m depending on PS 7.01 in my daily work,

so find and delete psicon.dll!
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 22, 2004
OK, so this should not be happening and it may not be very common. Strange that it happened to me shortly after I had read Larry’s post and somewhat fortuitous as I saw the file had disappeared.

So if you get this message, here’s the workaround to avoid potential disaster. Don’t close the file. Make sure you save under a different name or it’s gone.
L
larry
Feb 23, 2004
so find and delete psicon.dll!

Sorry, I’ve spent the day driving again and finally arrived home.

Some common sense here. Why doesn’t Photoshop CS uninstall or rename psicon.dll on installing if there is an issue? Have it throw up a dialog box saying an unessential file in your previous version will be renamed.

Larry Berman
L
LenHewitt
Feb 23, 2004
Larry,

Why doesn’t Photoshop CS uninstall or rename psicon.dll <<

psicon.dll is part of Photoshop 7 (and previous versions). I can imagine the uproar from those that have kept 7.x running along side CS if the CS installation had removed a file belonging to a previous version and therefore changed the behaviour of that previous version!
L
larry
Feb 23, 2004
I understand your answer is perfectly logical. But I imagine that the uproar would pale to those who find that CS vaporizes an important project without any warning.

This is one of those catch 22 issues where Adobe needs to find a solution right away.

Larry Berman
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 23, 2004
Adobe needs to find a solution right away.

Larry, the solution for you is to remove psicon.dll. For many people it works fine. For example, I had only one file lock issue in 2 years of ps7 and I didn’t lose the file, in fact I still have ps7 and the dll loaded along side CS – for me – no problems.

Some strange combination of software (so far unreproducable, I’m told, by Adobe) causes occasional problems. Apparently unresolvable, Adobe removed it in CS, but has no right to go back and pull it from a previous version where it might be working fine for any (most) given users. Witness the numerous long, convoluted threads from people who are pissed because it’s no longer in CS complete with reg hacks trying to get it working again!

Just remove it if it’s a problem for you.

dave
L
larry
Feb 23, 2004
Hi Dave,
That’s not my point. It’s always worked fine for me since last year. But it happened to my partner within a week of installing the program. There needs to be some kind of warning before people loose data and not know why. That’s what I’m saying.

Larry Berman
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 23, 2004
okey dokey. i’ll get right on it. 🙂
SB
Scott_Byer
Feb 23, 2004
Larry, is he sure the file was completely lost? Photoshop saves by making a temporary file, then moving it into place when it’s all done. If the original file was still locked at the time the temp was to be moved, the temp file should still be hanging out. The temporary file is generally created in the %TMP% directory, or at the root of the drive. I’ll be looking at issues around this, as we should never lose your data.

-Scot
L
LenHewitt
Feb 23, 2004
Larry,

There needs to be some kind of warning before people loose data and not
know why. <<

AFAIK, you are the first person to raise this problem of disappearing files. Yes, it IS serious (make that critical), but until it is a) known and b) confirmed by Adobe, they could hardly have issued any warnings, now could they?
L
larry
Feb 23, 2004
Hi Len,

If you read through the thread that followed my initial post, it was taken for granted that the psicon.dll file was causing the trouble, which I read to mean that it was an existing problem.

I’m familiar enough with the procedure for reporting bugs and giving Adobe enough information so they can duplicate and then fix them. I just assumed this type of problem might have already been reported as the thread led me to believe.

So just chalk this up to another bug that needs to be addressed in the point upgrade.

Larry Berman
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 23, 2004
Scott

There is no trace of any temporary file on my system that could be associated with this happening to me on Saturday.
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 23, 2004
No, this has not been reported before.

The "file is locked" problem was in PS 7, and seemed to be caused by an interaction of the OS and psicon.dll (called by the OS). Yes, that is part of why we had to get rid of psicon.dll.

As Scott said – Photoshop does a "safe save", so that we write to a temporary file and don’t delete the original until it is safe to do so.

I have no explanation of how Photoshop by itself could have deleted the file. We go to great lengths to prevent such things. (and next time – save to a new file name!)

You might want to check any anti-virus or file/disk utility software you have running – those could potentially cause such problems.
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 23, 2004
My machine is pretty new, clean and minimal in terms of apps. I have no disk utility programs running. NAV 2003 (the usual suspect for everything that goes wrong perhaps but I’ve had no problems with it apart from the VeriSign problem in early January) and Norton Firewall 2003.

I think it will be difficult to troubleshoot this as I expect it will be very hard to reproduce. However, the natural reaction to a message like this is to try to save under a different filename rather than close the file so hopefully people will not lose files.

I find it a strange coincidence that this should happen to me a few hours after reading Larry’s message but I assume it can only be pure coincidence.
L
larry
Feb 24, 2004
Here’s some more relevant information. My partner (Chris Maher) mistakenly told me it was a PSD but it was a layered TIF. I had him write a complete description out and will paste in in below. But in short, it was on a newly formatted hard drive with NO PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF Photoshop.

Chris:
I’ll relate the specifics of my data loss as best I can. I am working with Photoshop CS (the full Creative Suite Premium is installed) on a 1 gig Dell 4100 with 512mb of RAM, with a recent clean install of XP Pro as the OS, no older versions of any Adobe programs on this machine.

I was producing a portfolio of images, and had created a file to act as a template. The template file had the copyright text and image title each as text layers. It also had an alpha channel and a saved selection. The saved selection was used to drop an image into the template, and have the image have a consistent drop shadow with the rest of the prints in the portfolio. The file would then be saved as a tiff with LZW compression, with all layers, but without the alpha channel.

The trouble began when I reopened a saved file, selected it, and then added a 1 pixel stroke to outline the outer dimensions of the image. When I tried to do a save it took a while (about what you would expect with LZW compression), then gave an error, reporting that the file was locked, and I should use windows explorer to unlock the file. The file was not open in any other program, and had been opened in PS by dragging it from a Windows Explorer directory listing. Of course I had to say OK to this error dialog, then I closed the file, responding to the prompt asking me to save changes by saying no. I then tried to bring the file back into Photoshop, but it was no longer in the directory with the others. I refreshed the directory listing in Windows Explorer, but it was just gone. I went to the recent files in the PS file open dialog, and it was at the top, but when I clicked, it said the file could not be found.

This amazed me, so I opened another file, and repeated my actions, and it saved that file with the stroke just fine. I then proceeded to a third file, (all were identical saves of the same template file, with different images and file names) and after adding the stroke I tried to do a save, but once again I got the ‘file is locked’ error message. I checked the directory in Windows Explorer, and sure enough, the file I had open in PS was no longer in the directory listing. I said ok to the error, then saved the file with a new name, and it saved normally, but the original file I had just opened was gone.

I had 46 more files to work on, but from that point on, I saved each with a new file name after I had added the stroke. No problems with saving as, but I was wary of doing a normal save after seeing two files vaporize.

Other programs open at the time of these errors: Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, Colorbytes FinePrint 5.6 RIP, and a Notepad document.

Larry Berman and Chris Maher
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 24, 2004
The file that disappeared on me was a 50 Mb psd with a single levels adjustment layer and a few alpha channels.
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 24, 2004
it was on a newly formatted hard drive with NO PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF Photoshop.

yikes!
PC
Paul_Chaplo
Feb 24, 2004
Does this also occur if 5.5 is still on my system? What is the solution: uninstall the older version?

What exactly is the problem file? What is its function?

Thanks,
Paul
SB
Scott_Byer
Feb 24, 2004
Larry,

Is there a virus scanner on this machine or something else that accesses files in the background? It seems very much like a timing issue – you just happened to do something quickly enough to catch the guilty file-scanner or whoever in the act, and then something went wrong to alsoallow it to be deleted even though it was to be replaced. Hmm.

-Scott
L
larry
Feb 24, 2004
Yesterday I related the sequence of events and what programs were open when it happened. If you e-mail me off list, I’ll give you a phone number and e-mail address for my partmer Chris Maher.

Remember it happened on the first and third file he tried to open.

Larry Berman
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 24, 2004
Just shooting a red herring here before people get carried away. This can not have anything to do with psicon.dll or earleir versions of PS installed as Chris Maher did not have any earlier versions installed.

Chris makes no mention of any anti-virus program either so, if that is a full report, then it has nothing to do with virus scanners.

The fact that it throws up the same error message as the psicon problem may be the best hint in beginning to diagnose this problem which is likely to be very rare and nothing to get worried about.

Repeat – if you get this message save the file under a different name.
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 24, 2004
This can not have anything to do with psicon.dll or earleir versions of PS installed as Chris Maher did not have any earlier versions installed.

correct. hence my yikes. I agree w/scott, it does sound like a timing issue with something else that’s running and accessing the drive.

Lots of utilities access the disk… things like goBack, some system utils (norton, etc.), the os’s system restore, the OS’s indexing service, are just a couple of things that may be hitting the file at creation/modifcation time.

dave
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 24, 2004
Let’s eliminate goBack, system utils, indexing service (the first thing I disable after an install). System restore was enabled but not on the partition that I had the file on. I have since noticed that the PS temp file is created for a second or so during the save in the same folder as the file that is being saved.
DM
dave_milbut
Feb 24, 2004
It would have to be something that potentially is touching/trying to touch the file as it changes. I’m sure the temp file doesn’t do that.
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 25, 2004
I just mentioned that because Scott had said to look for the temp file which should still be somewhere on the disk. You need show hidden files to see it but a temp file comes up for a flash in the same folder when the image is being saved.
SB
Scott_Byer
Feb 25, 2004
Yeah, that would be the file. Photoshop saves into that tmp file, then once that’s completed properly, removes the old version of the file and moves in that already saved version. This is known as a "safe save", and should have at least left around the temp file on the occasions where there was a problem with the new file.

I’ll be eagle-eyeing that part of the code again.

-Scott
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 27, 2004
Scott and co.

This has just happened to me again. When I got the message, I noticed the file disappearing on my second monitor. Naturally I saved over the file so I haven’t lost any work. Again I was saving over a psd file with a few adjustment layers and alpha channels to reduce it back to normal size. I had no other apps running but NAV and Norton Firewall in the background.

This might be totally off the mark but it’s a vague hunch and maybe it’s worth considering. I noticed in Chris Maher’s post that he mentioned that he was dragging the files from Win Explorer. Now I rarely do this but I was actually dragging files from Win Explorer when it happened to me last week so I decided to do it again to see if it might possibly generate the error. Is it possible that dragging files might have a different effect to opening them by double clicking or from within PS so that the PS error trapping is not cathcing something under certain circumstances?
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 27, 2004
Another thing. The temp file does not seem to be created when this happens.
CC
Chris_Cox
Feb 28, 2004
Unless you get a warning saying that we can’t do a safe save, the temp file IS created when doing a save.

And without more details about precisely what you’re doing, and the exact order that you’re doing them — I don’t know….
MM
Mick_Murphy
Feb 28, 2004
Chris

I would like to make clear that my only purpose in posting this is to perhaps give you guys a pointer to what might be happening. I’m not worried about it myself as I can easily workaround if it happens but the fact that it is causing potential data loss must be of some concern to Adobe.

Just for the record I have now seen this error a third time and in all cases I was doing very simple and straightforward stuff on 8 bit 50 Mb slide scans saved as psd files. In all cases I dragged the files into PS from Win Explorer and had the Explorer window open on the other monitor. No other apps running except NAV and Norton Firewall in the background.

Each time I got the error I had created several alpha channels and added a few adjustment layers, nothing more complicated than doing some tidying up of my photos. Adding the adjustment layers caused the file size doubling problem I reported elsewhere. The workaround for this is to save over the file which brings it back to normal size. I have done this save over many times since getting CS without generating an error. In these RARE instances, in attempting to Save As, I got the cannot save because file is locked error. The file disappears at this point from the folder. I save as another file name and everything is fine. There is in fact a temp file created (the previous post was incorrect) but it is 0 kb in size in comparison to the usual significant file size.

I don’t believe this has anything to do with anything I was doing in PS as Chris Maher was doing something completely different. I think this has something to do with the way PS interacts with the Windows file system and it is a freak event.

My system is 4 months old – Athlon 2800. I am using 2 new IDE drives with lots of free space, regular defragging and occasional disk checking using the XP utility. I have not got Norton Utilities or any other disk or system utilities on the machine. Abbreviated info below.

Adobe Photoshop Version: 8.0 (8.0×118)
Operating System: Windows XP
Version: 5.1 Service Pack 1
System architecture: AMD CPU Family:6, Model:10, Stepping:0 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP Processor speed: 2083 MHz
Built-in memory: 1024 MB
Free memory: 731 MB
Memory available to Photoshop: 933 MB
Memory used by Photoshop: 90 %
Image cache levels: 4
Use image cache for histograms: No
Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\ Temporary file path: C:\DOCUME~1\Michael\LOCALS~1\Temp\
Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled
Scratch volume(s):
J:\, 55.7G, 55.5G free

Installed TWAIN devices:
Nikon Scan 3.1
EPSON TWAIN 5
CC
Chris_Cox
Mar 1, 2004
OK – that’s weird.

Do you have a previous version of Photoshop installed? (where psicon.dll might cause problems)
MM
Mick_Murphy
Mar 2, 2004
I have two Win XP OS on two separate partitions with CS on each, originally installed over PS6. When I first saw this error, I was working on the D partition and I uninstalled 6 on that. I left it installed on C and that was the partition I was working on when I saw the error the 2nd and 3rd time. So PS6 has been on the same partition whenever the error has occurred.

However, Chris Maher said above he had a clean install of CS with no previous versions so, assuming the cause is the same on his machine and mine, psicon.dll should not be the problem.
V
viol8ion
Mar 2, 2004
psicon.dll should not be the problem.

psicon.dll is a known cause of this problem. If anyone would know, the Adobe engineers advice should trump what you think you know, so I would take Chris’s suggestion seriously.
MM
Mick_Murphy
Mar 2, 2004
viol8ion

Have you read this thread or are you just hopping in here at the bottom. Please read what Chris Maher said about previous versions not being installed on his machine and then explain. Logic says that it may or may not be psicon on my machine but it certainly is not on his.
V
viol8ion
Mar 2, 2004
Have you read this thread or are you just hopping in here at the bottom. Please read what Chris Maher said about previous versions not being installed on his machine and then explain. Logic says that it may or may not be psicon on my machine but it certainly is not on his.

I have been following it for the past week (I generally just lurk andlearn) …. and that is what I meant.. psicon.dll is likley the cause of your problem, Maher seems to have a different problem that is a new one. Sorry if my post seems obtuse!
GH
Grass_Hopper
Mar 2, 2004
Interesting though that I don’t believe I have ever read a complaint for PS6 or PS7 where the files were vaporized. With the psicon.dll issue, the icon wasn’t showing the files in Explorer, but it wasn’t causing files to disappear altogether.

Also, am I reading this correctly that the only files that have vaporized were brought into PSCS by way of *drag and drop* from the Windows Explorer (as opposed to double clicking), instead of File -> Open from within PSCS? If so, maybe *this* has more to do with the problem??

I have never opened a file that way and I am wondering how many others use this method?
MM
Mick_Murphy
Mar 2, 2004
Sorry viol8ion if I was a bit snappy there. I don’t know. I’m mainly working on the partition without psicon so if it happens again then that will be definitive. It was just very odd that this happened the same day that Larry Berman posted. Maybe it just happens on Saturdays in February.

GH, the only time I’ve seen it has been when I’ve dragged files but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It was about the only thing I could see in common between what I was doing and what Chris Maher was doing. The only reason I was doing it was I had an Explorer window open to monitor changes in file size as I was adding adjustment layers. The file definitely disappears completely without trace.
DM
dave_milbut
Mar 2, 2004
I’m mainly working on the partition without psicon so if it happens again then that will be definitive.

that doesn’t matter. if it’s registered on your system it’s available to all systems… unless you’re talking about dual boot (if i missed that), in which case… nevermind. 🙂
MM
Mick_Murphy
Mar 2, 2004
Dave

I am talking dual boot WinxXP home. I set up a dual boot system because I had been having hardware problems after getting the machine and it had crashed a lot when using the C OS. I installed a fresh OS on D when I solved the problem (processor) although C is in fact fine.
MA
Mark_Allen
Mar 2, 2004
Mick, Larry,

One thing you both mention but no-one has picked up on is you both had "Layer and/or Adjustment Masks" on your work.

Just a suggestion which may have been overlooked

Regards

Mark
MM
Mick_Murphy
Mar 2, 2004
Mark

I think the only real similarity there is that the files contained alpha channels which shouldn’t really matter. However, looking back at Chris’s post, the only other thing I can see is that in saving he was dropping the alpha channel in saving as a TIFF. I was resaving PSD files to get rid of the full resolution composite image which doubles file size when there are adjustment layers because of the problem with Maximize Compatibility. Perhaps it has something to with the process of removing data from the file. I know not.
GH
Grass_Hopper
Mar 4, 2004
bump

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