Photoshop 7 + XP Pro

[CJK1]

I use Photoshop 7 on a number of systems, 3 of which use XP Pro. All but one work fine. But one system crashes after a random number of manipulations (anything from 1 to 10)to a blue screen and does a (interminable!) memory dump to disk.

It is an Athlon 1400 MHz CPU on a MS-6330 M/B with 512 MB RAM. I have replaced the RAM, tried 2 different graphics cards with the latest drivers, updated the VIA chipset M/B drivers. Even went as far as reloading on new HD with just XP Pro and PS7. All other programs work perfectly. Hard to believe that a faulty CPU could cause this problem but even thinking of replacing that. Any suggestions?

 

[mscallisto]

Are you in a position where you can swap components (one at a time) from a good system to the bad system?

If so, you should be able to determine if the problem is hardware.

Also have you compared bios levels?

 

[CJK1]

This is basically what I have been doing except that I don't have an Athlon chip in any other system. I have not yet upgraded BIOS, did download the alleged upgrade but it does not appear to be the right one so will have to look at that again. Seemed an unlikely cause, however.

BTW the system is about 2 years old.

I also simplified it by removing SCSI and sound cards just in case there was some obscure conflict.

 

[CJK1]

Tha problem was the BIOS. Downloading the latest version and flashing the BIOS chip got rid of the crashing problem. Question is, why was only Photoshop affected? That may have to remain an academic question.

 

[mscallisto]

Great...I'm happy you resolved your problem.

Somewhere those who created the BIOS upgrade (maybe Phoenix Technologies), has a white paper that covers the problems resolved.

If you're not satisfied with the question remaining academic you could do the following:

Example for Phoenix Technologies
From

http://www.google.com,

in the search line enter
phoenixbios 4.0 release 6.0

to see lots of whitepapers about that particular bios.

 

[CJK1]

It's an Award BIOS and the version was 3.0 which I upgraded to 3.6. Incidentally, none of versions 5.5, 6.0 or 7.0 would work properly with the original BIOS. I talked to quite a few others running PS, and no-one else had the problem so it may have been unique to this M/B BIOS combination. Anyway, having fixed the problem, I may try to follow up the reasons if I find time.