AI CS freezes when moving an object

[Rick_E._Johnson@adobeforums.com]

I'm finding this happening more often lately (several times a week), where I'll drag an object in Illustrator CS, and it freezes, leaving me with a technicolor pizza cursor. Once it happened when selecting an item from a menu. I'm using Panther with all the current updates on a dual G5 with 2G of RAM. Five other people in my department have identical systems and never had this problem, nor has it happened to me at home with another similar system. This doesn't happen with other applications, or I'd suspect a G5 issue.

My illustrations typically don't use any of AI's advanced features, such as effects or transparency. Just simple vectors.

I wish there were some way to invoke a crash report so Adobe could at least see what AI was doing when it zoned out.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

I would suspect mismatched RAM which has been reported to to induce several problems with AI CS.

Not necessarily bad RAM but mismatched and none of this matched RAM were called faulty by the Apple Hardware Testing Utility. And most of this seems to happen with G5s?

Take out all but the Apple RAM and then see if it goes away. I would still suspect the G5 and not the the program even if it only affected one program especially since this is far from universal.

[Rick_E._Johnson@adobeforums.com]

Thanks, Wade, I'll try that.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Good luck let us know if it had any merit!

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

How frozen is it? Can you force quit the program?

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

I have had the same problem in the last week or two. This after running crashfree for a month. When illustrator locks up, it is frequently afteror during moving (constrained) an object or sometimes a palette. It has happened as often as 4 times a day and seems to affect only pretty complex files.

When it freezes, I can not force quit the program or even restart the system without using the reset button. All other programs continue to run just fine when I move the cursor over the Illustrator window it turns into the ball. Once a while back, I had a similar problem with Mail but at the moment, Illustrqator is the only program to do this. Although, I've had intermittant Illustrator crashes for quite some time these are a little different in that I cannot just restart the program.

The problem seems to come and go so it is difficult to pin down if anything fixes it

[Dee Holmes]

And we've all trashed preferences and repaired permissions?

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

It really sounds like it is hardware related!

[Dee Holmes]

Hmmm, why would it be all of a sudden, Wade?

[Dee Holmes]

Never mind, I think I can think of some reasons.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

It's a good question and even your suggestion for trashing the preferences might actually make it seem that it is not hardware related as that might actually temporarily fix the problem. The problem with the hardware may have an effect say on cache file etc.

[Dee Holmes]

Yup, that's one of the things I thought of after.

[Joe_leMonnier@adobeforums.com]

Maybe it is hardware related.

I have though made one big software change a little before these crashes started. That is: I upgraded from jaguar to Panther. Its true (I think) that a hardware flaw would "exploit" a software change, but what to do?

As it occurs now, I only get it on the complex files and its very intermittant and thus hard to document what causes and what fixes it.

I see that a few (but not many) people post similiar problems which would suggest it to be a hardware problem that only comes up rarely. Although, the use of third party RAM is extremely common, we do not see that many complaints. This to me suggests that its a more uncommon "conflict"

I'm planning to upgrade to X.3.4 tonight and maybe that will solve things, who knows?

Joe

[Rick_E._Johnson@adobeforums.com]

FWIW, I deleted my preferences and haven't had a freeze since (fingers crossed).

[Rick_E._Johnson@adobeforums.com]

Oh oh, it just happened again: I tried to move some paths and got the spinning technicolor pizza. Dang.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

Rick this has never happened to me and as you know I also work on files with many paths I still think it could be hardware related even though you have a relatively new G5. Mismatch RAM does seem to be a problem on G5s.

[Dave_MacLachlan@adobeforums.com]

Rick....I don't suppose you have the dev tools installed do you? (Fingers crossed!)

[Rick_E._Johnson@adobeforums.com]

Dave, I have CodeWarrior and Xcode installed at home, but the freezes only happen at work. I could get Xcode installed there, if that makes it possible to gather clues as to what's happening.

I'm certain the RAM is matched, as it's all the same spec, bought and installed at the same time.

[Dave_MacLachlan@adobeforums.com]

Hey Rick...I was actually thinking of Spin Control. That would give us a sample so we could figure out what Illustrator was up to.

[Rick_E._Johnson@adobeforums.com]

Dave, I don't know what Spin Control is, and it's not installed on my development Mac. If this gets technical, please feel free to contact me by email or iChat. -- Rick