Adding to selection w/ Magic Wand crashes machine

JS
Posted By
Joe Stephenson
Aug 22, 2003
Views
445
Replies
5
Status
Closed
When using the Magic Wand tool on large files my computer hangs and has to be rebooted with loss of data when I try to make several additions by holding down the shift key and clicking on the areas that I wish to add.

I am using PS 7.0.1 and W2000, SP1. The computer is a Dell 530 with dual 2 gig Xeon processors. The machine has 1 gig of RAM and a scratch disk on an external Buslink HD operated through a 1394 port.

I’ve experienced the same error on another machine (Dell 350) and have heard reports from other users of the same problems. I’ll be grateful for any help.

Thanks,

Joe Stephenson
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P
Phosphor
Aug 22, 2003
Did you read the FAQ? It covers this problem quit well.

Short version: you have defective hardware in your system.
D
DOMTEK
Aug 22, 2003
Dave,
This may be off the original topic a bit, (but may be related) and may be of some general use to others.
I know that a blue screen error means bad hardware in win2k.. defective hardrive, video card… But can’t a bad driver cause the hardware to act defective when it is otherwise good? I ask this because I had a bad driver from a a usb2 card that caused my system to instantaneously reboot when I tried changing my paging file. When I fixed the driver it fixed the problem. I have also had drives "going bad" that caused system freezes.

MS recently released a win2k patch (822831) that did this: Some driver installation programs don?t work on Windows 2000 (W2K) after you install either Critical Update QFE 813044 or W2K Server SP4. The installation does not succeed and you receive an incorrect error that no drivers are available for the device. The %WINDIR%\Setupapi.log reports there are no compatible drivers for the device. After installation, you may have to restart your computer.

This patch seems to address some of the problems that may cause hardware to fail.

Peace,
Mike
JS
Joe Stephenson
Aug 22, 2003
Thanks for the responses. I tried a search but got no hits related to magic wand; at times–now, for example–the search feature has been inoperative, apparently due to ongoing revisions in the fora.

cheers,

Joe S.
DJ
dennis johnson
Aug 22, 2003
If it’s of any help, Joe, I am running Win2K on my Photoshop machine. (Dell 1GHz P4, 1G RAM.) I was using the Magic Wand tool in just the manner you describe on a project yesterday – adding to a selection – and the machine held up fine. I suspect you’ve got bad hardware somewhere…the first suspect in my mind is that external HD being used for scratch.
D
DOMTEK
Aug 22, 2003
OK, my experiences have been different. The only blue screen errors I have gotten show an addess on the drive where the failure occured. In all instances it was a hard drive going bad (ibm deskstar 60GB-one instance, 60 GB western digital- second instance) both were tested and proved defective and the drives returned and replaced.
One system freeze occured because of a bad 1394 card though. The instant reboot was from a bad driver for an orange usb2.0 card and the website has the fix and stated problem. Of course this could have been exasperated by the SP4 service pack and fixed by the new win2k patch.

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