[hvinck]

I have experienced a strange event while working with CS. In the middle of my workflow the help-screen interferes what I am doing and multiplies itself in several copies. Any attempt to close down such a window results in openening even more windows. Impossible to close those help-files. The more I try, the more of them I get back. Ctr-Alt-Del brings no solution. Whilst this is happening, there is no way to go on with the actual job. Windows (XP Pro - SP2) cannot be shut down eather. Really very frustrating! My system is absolutally free of virusses and there is no spyware or malware running (Using AVG-AntiVirus with the most recent Database - and AdAware Pro). Same thing happened a few times when I was still using Photoshop 7 (before the installation of SP2).

Is there anyone who ended up with the same problem or something similar? I would appreciate your feedback.
Hans

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Hans, have you tried deleting your preferences file, this often causes wierd things in Photoshop if it gets corrupted. To do it, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt when opening the program. It will display a dialog box asking if its OK ti delete preference file. Click Yes. Photoshop will now create a default preference file, but hopefully your unusual incidents will stop. Unfortunately you will have lost your preferences which will need to be re-entered by you.

[hvinck]

Hi Garry,

Not so long ago I deleted the preference file. I am not able to evaluate its immediate effect though because I can work for days or weeks in a raw with everyting running smoothly and then all of a sudden the wierdo attacks unexpectedly. Anyway I am going to delete the preference file again.

Thanks Gary.

[Gary Richardson]

Only other thing I can think of is to do a clean install of Photoshop, but this is obviously a drastic action, and I'd wait to hear from some of the others here before I did any thing as serious as that.

[hvinck]

Indeed I'd rather not reinstall CS. Meanwhile the preferences file has been deleted. I am already on the job again, until ......... ?

[MBChamberlain]

This *MIGHT* work, but i'm not sure. This is assuming that it opens in Internet Explorer in CS like it does in 7. If you use a different web browser this might be different.

This is an excellent software package, but it is important to note that you should not use it if you don't know what you are doing. Unlike Task Manager this will let you close any process, even the ones that will crash Windows, so tread softly on it.

Go to sysinternals.com and go to the utilities section and download the PSTools package. Unzip them to the system32 folder in your windows directory (WINNT folder on some systems). Now you are installed.

When your help window comes up again open the command prompt (click Start>Run> then type "cmd" and hit enter. At the command prompt type:

pskill iexplore.exe

and press enter. This will force kill all processes started by the application iexplore.exe. This might get you back into Photoshop, but I'm not sure. This also comes in handy if you get into one of those blasted ad loops where every window you close opens two more.

Try this, see if it works.

**This may trigger a flag in your antivirus program because a process terminated a process it didn't start, but don't worry about it.

Hope this helps,

Michael

[hvinck]

Thank you for the hint, Michael. As soon as the problem reoccurs I will use the tool "pskill" you mentioned before. Just one more thing. When I run "cmd" I find myself in a subfolder of C: ("Documents and Settings"). Do I need to go back to its root before typing the command line?

Hans