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Hudechrome
Hudechrome
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Auto Reset Prefs?

Jun 13, 2012 12:50 PM

Tags: #reset_prefs

This morning, I got up early to finish a project. Photoshop looked loke it had been invaded by some sort of hack, at least to someone at 4AM before coffee!

 

It turned out that preferences had been reset to default, except for the arrangement of palettes on my second screen. And that really confused me. It took a while to realize exactly what happened. When I told PS to Reset my personal settings, then the palettes also changed.

 

So, what happened?

 

I'm running CS6 on Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit. I don't turn the computer off, I use Sleep Mode over night. A reboot of course did nothing to fix it.

 

It took over an hour to finally understand what happened and begin to reset everything back. Some items like Open CL and such remained as I set it but others, even my custom hot keys went back to default. Hence the hour+ to redo it.

 

Looking for the Reset Prefs file, I found it under Roaming. I assume that is the correct file. I also found a separate file for setting keystrokes and several others, also indicting that they had been changed this date. So until I scope out all those controls I don't know what actually changed back to what. I saved it to the desktop to prepare for similar problems in the future. Do I need to save anthing else?

 

A side but appropriate note: Shift+F6 does not bring up the Feathering Dialog. It brings up Flip. The keystroke dialog says Shift+F6 controls Feathering. So Feathering had to be reset. I set it to Ctrl+Alt+F6. This was true for the beta version but is still true for the Release version.

 

There may be others.

381 Views   6 Replies   Latest reply: Hudechrome, Jun 14, 2012 10:32 AM
 
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  • Noel Carboni
    20,972 posts
    Dec 23, 2006
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    1. Noel Carboni,
    Jun 13, 2012 1:45 PM   in reply to Hudechrome
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    Lawrence, please let me rephrase what I read to ensure I understdand you:

     

    What you're saying is that on a Photoshop startup you found Photoshop to have reset preferences, but not your workspace, without your having done so?  Or was Photoshop already running?

     

    As you may have read in my book, I advise against using sleep states.  That may not be "green thinking", but Windows just has a lot of trouble waking all its hardware up, and I've run across more folks than not who have trouble after suspending their systems. 

     

    It's better to just either leave your system on and allow it to turn off the monitors and spin down the disks, or just shut it down fully if you want maximum power savings.  If you choose the latter, it's well worth the few moments longer it takes to boot up.  Personally, I leave my system on 24/7 and I just don't have trouble...  At the moment it's been running and under hard use for just over 12 days, since the last software update required a restart.

     

    Uptime.jpg

     

    -Noel

     
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  • Hudechrome
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    2. Hudechrome,
    Jun 13, 2012 6:37 PM   in reply to Noel Carboni
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    Ok, everything went to default except the palette arrangements on the second screen. When I decided I was to setup my workspace again, I clicked reset My Workspace, then the palette changed as well.

     

    I have suspected Sleep as well. Win 7 seems to be far better than XP, but when at Intel, the smoke tests we ran before running app tests included a robust test of all the Sleep staes allowed in the particular BIOS. They never failed.

     

    I just returned and woke up the computer. While I did not see Pref problems, I did see (and have seen in the past) that Bridge did not go back to the last opened file. Instead, Bridge only showed Desktop and Computer as choices. The computer tree was completely collapsed.

     

    So I'll likely simply reset power options to shut down HD and the monitor and leave it at that.

     

    I still would appreciate an answer to the question about saving Prefs for possible reset. Do I need also to save the other .psp files? Workspace is one of them.

     

    Thanks!

     
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  • Noel Carboni
    20,972 posts
    Dec 23, 2006
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    3. Noel Carboni,
    Jun 14, 2012 8:45 AM   in reply to Hudechrome
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    I've no experience with manually manipulating Photoshop preferences files myself because I simply haven't had to do so.  Here's hoping someone else will chime in on what files you should manipulate to effect a restoral of your prefs.  I'm not sure whether you'd have to create a script or batch file that would manipulate files in multiple different folders. 

     

    This page describes what the various files are and where they can be found:  http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/preference-file-functions-names-lo cations.html

     

    That help page suffers from version ambiguity (it says CS5 and multiple different versions e.g., 11.0, 12.0), but if you substitute CS6 and 60.0 in appropriate places you get what you need.

     

    -Noel

     
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  • R_Kelly
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    4. R_Kelly,
    Jun 14, 2012 8:59 AM   in reply to Hudechrome
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    Do you by chance have the Commands action set loaded? That set has the Shift+F6 shortcut set for Flip Horizontal.

     

    For years once i install a new version of photoshop and get the preferences, workspaces and such set, then i make a copy of the whole preferences folder (adobe photoshop cs6 in your case)

    (C:\Users\Your Name\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6) and save it somewhere on my hard drive. Then if you need to reset the preferences one can just replace that folder with your backup.

     
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  • Hudechrome
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    5. Hudechrome,
    Jun 14, 2012 10:21 AM   in reply to Noel Carboni
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    No script or batch AFAIK. Everything is in one folder, as the reference points out.

     

    Reinstalling Photoshop does not remove the preferences file. Before reinstalling Photoshop, re-create your preferences.

     

    If PS doesn remove that file, then how did it get set to default? As I understand it, PS rer creates that file if it is missing, but not if it's corrupt.

     
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  • Hudechrome
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    6. Hudechrome,
    Jun 14, 2012 10:32 AM   in reply to R_Kelly
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    I looked and yes, Command Actions are loaded. Now that presents a conflict, because when I look into resetting Keyboard Shortcuts, it does say that Shift+F6 is the stroke. If I try to assign a keystroke already in use, PS makes me go through a routine so that I understand what is being changed and given the opportunity to resolve the conflict, if I wish. But in the case of Commands being loaded (which is by default AFAIK) the conflict is set up but not resolved. I'll leave that be because I did reassign a stroke to Feather, leaving the Command stroke intact because of Shift F6 or F7 do compementary moves.

     

    I am considering simply copying thae entire folder dealing with prefs as you do on general principles. Hopefully, abanoning Sleep mode will do the trick, but I have been using Sleep since installing Win 7 and never had this problem with CS5. However, if I am going to be losing sleep over using Sleep, guess which I'll opt for!

     
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