Elements 1 Opens, but Freezes When Opening a Pic

[Kevin Logan]

I recently upgraded from win98 to XP. Elements 1.0 will open and everything works normally (Help, Prefs, etc.) until I try to open an image file, then the computer freezes and I have to reboot the whole system. My files are normally in the 20 to 30mb size. I'm running a P3 550 with 512 RAM, and two hard drives, a 20gb with 11gigs free as my primary and a 10gb with 8gigs free, I've tried using both as a scratch disk, didn't help. If it helps, I did disable hardware acceleration on my video card, an nVidia MX440 w/64mb RAM, and files would at least open, but would freeze again as soon as I tried working on them. I never had this problem under Win98, and I have upgraded all of my drivers. Sorry this is so long, but I really need help. Thanks

[Beth Haney]

When you upgraded to XP, how did you do it? Was it a totally clean install on freshly formated drives onto which you then did a clean install of all applications, or did you do an install of XP over the Win 98 system with apps still in place? If you did the latter, try trashing the Elements Preference folder. Something may have become corrupted. If it was a nice fresh install, hopefully someone else more knowledgeable about Win systems will help you out! :)

To delete the Preference folder, have Elements closed, then click the start up icon and make a quick grab for the Control, Alt, and Shift keys. Hold all three down until you get a screen asking if you want to delete the Settings. Say Yes.

[Kevin Logan]

It was a completely fresh install, the 20gb harddrive is new also, so, everything is about as clean as it will ever be. Thanks for trying though.

[BobHill]

Kevin,

Are you running anything by Norton on your system? Did you have an active anti-virus operating when you installed Elements? Does it crash when you try to open ANY image, or just on one or certain images?

Bob