Mac Photoshop CS4 stalls – force quit quits the app, but it remains active in the Dock

[star-affinity]

Our retouch department is having some issues in Photoshop CS4 11.0.1.

One of the problems is that Photoshop suddenly just stalls while working (beach ball spins) and it doesn't stop.

Below are four different samples of Photoshop when in the stalled state:

http://home.mac.se/star-affinity/sample_of_photoshop.txt

http://home.mac.se/star-affinity/sample_of_photoshop_2.txt

http://home.mac.se/star-affinity/sample_of_photoshop_3.txt

http://home.mac.se/star-affinity/sample_of_photoshop_4.txt

http://home.mac.se/star-affinity/sample_of_photoshop_5.txt

When this stall happens, if one tries to force quit Photoshop it ”goes away” from the Activity Monitor, but the icon in the Dock remains active as if the application is still running. After some few minutes (around five maybe) it finally ”gets quit” in the Dock too so it can be relaunched.

Any ideas on this?

We run the first version of Mac Pro (2.66 GHz) with the ATI X1900 graphics card.

Some run 10.5.6 but some have started to move to 10.5.7.

Some have 5 GB RAM and some have 9 GB RAM.

All samples above are from a machine running 10.5.6, but I've heard the stall also happened on a 10.5.7 machine.

[Chris Cox]

1) Shows Photoshop sitting and waiting for input - doing nothing.

2-5 all show the same thing:  photoshop tried to draw something to the display, and the OS crashed or hung. (crash reporter can take many minutes to bring up the dialog after a crash occurs)

But we aren't seeing many drawing crashes or hangs like you're showing.  I suspect you have a bad install or a hardware problem with your system.

(we've seen some other drawing crashes, but they have a different pattern)

[imclaudiah]

Hi I have the same problem. I am running 10.5.7 and encounter this issue a lot. At least 2 times a week. Mine is an iMac 2.33 Duo with 4GB RAM. Photoshop stalls then cant force quit. Some times have to do a hard restart to get rid of it.

Photoshop does not show on Activity Monitor after the Force Quit, but still shows on Force Quit Window and hitting Force Quit does nothing.

I have removed preferences a coupke times and nothing. Any ideas?

Thanks! 🙂 Claudia

[star-affinity]

Hi Claudia,

No ideas here yet I'm afraid... But I'm quite sure you don't have to do a hard reset. It will get quit eventually, the question is of course if you have the paitence to wait long enough.

[Chris Cox]

If you can't force quit - then something is hung/hosed at the OS or driver level.

You may have a bad OS install.

[philwiles]

Same problem here, can't force quit. Recently wiped my entire machine (3GHz MacBook Pro, 10.5.7 4GHz RAM)) still get the same thing. I'll get a response saying "Application Photoshop has unexpectedly quit" but it kind of hangs in limbo not quit but not running, only thing to do is a hard reset – had to do 4 today

[Chris Cox]

"Application Photoshop has unexpectedly quit"

That means you're waiting on Apple's crash reporter software to gather information. It make take several minutes to do that before it prompts you to send in the crash report.   Note that Adobe's crash reports still use the Apple crash report software to gather the info - it just gets mailed to a different place.

[philwiles]

Thanks for the reply Chris, but I've left the machine over lunch (so about an hour) and still nothing happens, haven't got the patience to wait longer than an hour, not feasible in my job

Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 12:09:15 -0600

From: forums@adobe.com

To: philwiles@hotmail.com

Subject: Photoshop CS4 stalls – force quit quits the app, but it remains active in the Dock

"Application Photoshop has unexpectedly quit"

That means you're waiting on Apple's crash reporter software to gather information. It make take several minutes to do that before it prompts you to send in the crash report. Note that Adobe's crash reports still use the Apple crash report software to gather the info - it just gets mailed to a different place.

>

[-_JM_-]

There are plenty of people experiencing exactly the same thing... so I think it's difficult to point the finger at the end-user setup etc. I don't see the same problem with the crash reporter and other apps.

It would be nice to fix the reason for the crash, but the real annoyance and interruption is waiting to restart PS. So, it would be best to be realistic about the situation.

Can the underlying crash be fixed in a reasonable amount of time?

If the answer is no, then the next question should be can we fix the crash reporting problem and if that means disabling it, then I'd vote yes. I personally don't need the crash reports to get my job done.

I realize that the problem may be with Apple, but to be quite honest it doesn't make a difference to the end-user that is sitting at his/her desktop staring at the screen. And in the end, no matter where the fault lies both Adobe and Apple get a little tarnished.....

regards j

ps....

I really like the CS4 suite, best one yet (I've owned every version of PS since v2), I realize that the forums tend to be problem focused so I thought I'd add this for a little balance.

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

<JM> wrote:

There are plenty of people experiencing exactly the same thing... so I think it's difficult to point the finger at the end-user setup etc. I don't see the same problem with the crash reporter and other apps.

There are other things that can cause this and it might only effect Photoshop. A font for instance or a font data base (cache) files, color or monitor profiles. A plug in and of course the ever popular mismatched RAM or hey bad RAM bought at the same supplier.

[-_JM_-]

Hi Wade

My post was a little confusing because there are 2 things that I was trying to address.

You are correct that there are bunches of reasons for stalls/crashes/freezes and abrupt quits. The focus of the my point was that all of these events are being passed along to the Crash Reporter and this is where some of us are not able to restart PS because the app stays alive for quite a while before shutting down, and not responsive to a force quit either.

So, this gets us to point 2.

It would be great if the crash report was intelligent enough to give the end user some real information.... "if you stop doing this, PS won't crash", but that's not the case. All of the reports are very cryptic and sent along to Apple/Adobe, and except of a possible bug fix in the future, we don't receive any information about what is causing these problems, or any information about know issues. And this would be just fine with me if it sent the report and I could restart PS and get on with my day.

But that isn't what is occurring, this delay of several minutes or more to restart PS because of the crash reporter doesn't make sense to me. And this is what seems to be specific to PS. I would guess that there have been enough reports sent to Adobe at this point for all of the basic problems to keep them busy for awhile.

And here's the point that I was trying to make ( sorry for the long ride ) .... crashes and freezes happen due to all of the things that you mentioned, it's part of our daily grind, but the real annoyance is waiting for the crash reporter. This is a feature that I could do without.

I know that the crash reporter is a necessary evil to improve things, but I've never had this delay with any other app and this makes the crash reporter + PS a bug that needs to be fixed.

regards

j

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

JM,

You do realize that Apple writes, distributes, maintains and remains responsible for the crash reporter, don't you?

Have you reported the delay to Apple?  Apple may be blissfully unaware of it.

[-_JM_-]

Hi Ramon

>You do realize that Apple writes, distributes, maintains and remains responsible for the crash reporter, don't you?

I mentioned that it was potentially an Apple problem in my first post, here's a portion of that post:

"I realize that the problem may be with Apple, but to be quite honest it doesn't make a difference to the end-user that is sitting at his/her desktop staring at the screen. And in the end, no matter where the fault lies both Adobe and Apple get a little tarnished....."

>Apple may be blissfully unaware of it.

well.... this is an Adobe forum.... can someone from Adobe confirm that nobody has mentioned this to Apple?

and if it has been discussed with Apple with no response, can Adobe shutdown the reporting on their side, would this be a short-term remedy?

thanks

j

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

<JM> wrote:

well.... this is an Adobe forum.... can someone from Adobe confirm that nobody has mentioned this to Apple?

This is a user to user forum, not officially nor regularly monitored by Adobe.  When Adobe staff drop by, like Chris Cox has, they do so as volunteers on their own time and on their own dime.

[-_JM_-]

>This is a user to user forum, not officially nor regularly monitored by Adobe.

If there is a problem with any portion of a project, even if it's an outside vendor I track it down because in the end it reflects upon my studio. I would think that Adobe is doing the same.

j

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Only each user experiencing the crash and the delay of the crash reporter can report those issues to Apple.

In my case, for example, Photoshop 11.0.1 doesn't crash even on my officially not-supported older machine.

[-_JM_-]

>In my case, for example, Photoshop 11.0.1 doesn't crash

are you working in a production environment? it seems that most of the people experiencing this are working professionals in advanced setups.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

I'm in Photoshop up to 20 hours a day sometimes, but that's irrelevant.  The point is that someone who does not experience the issue is not in a position to report malfunctions that others experience.

I understand your frustration, but arguing with me is not going to get you anywhere, and wishing the elephantine Adobe bureaucracy responded in the manner you wish is not going to change reality.

Again, Adobe does not have one-sided control over the crash reporter.  Apple does.

[-_JM_-]

> arguing with me is not going to get you anywhere,

I wasn't arguing. My point was that as Wade mentioned that there are a variety of issues that can cause problems, and in a production environment computers can be littered with client fonts, working in 3D, nested smart layers etc. that may not occur in other situations.

I'll bow out of this conversation now, have a great weekend.

j

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

<JM> wrote:

My point was that as Wade mentioned that there are a variety of issues that can cause problems, and in a production environment computers can be littered with client fonts, working in 3D, nested smart layers etc. that may not occur in other situations.

Which is precisely why YOU should report the crash report delay to Apple.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Someone reported recently that a client billing/monitoring utility was slowing down Photoshop CS4 in strange ways.  It—or similar 3rd-party software— could be affecting the crash reporter too.

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

Any such data base file computation software will access the file at a

specific tie that is when it changes thins and makes note of the

process taking place at a certain time but so will other types of dta

bases.

[Al_Ferrari]

I am also experiencing the problem of the very long quit delay for Photoshop CS3 on a G4 mac running 10.4.11. Where can I report this to Apple? I have searched the Apple site, but could not find a url for reporting it.

Thanks,

Al

[Wade_Zimmerman1]

I don't disagree with you and I really doubt that many people would…

but these things do not change unless someone makes a suggestion that

point to a solution.

Which is what we would have to do and hope Apple & Adobe notices it.

[KiersM]

Hi All

I've been having this problem on a brand new mid-09 Macbook Pro.

One thing I did find today when it happened was:

- I repeatedly tried force quit, and like you all said, the windows closed, and the process was removed from the activity monitor, but the dock still showed the dot, and the force quit dialog still showed photoshop (not Responding) - although the "not Responding" went after a few minutes.

- I then Secondary clicked the icon in the dock and selected "Force Quit" from there, and hey presto, the dot disappeared and I could restart the app

I don't know if I just hadn't had as severe a stall as you all, or not, so I'll keep trying it next time it happens - Part of me refuses to believe that simply force quitting via the dock icon is a workaround, but give it a try and let me know if helps in your situations too.

Cheers

Kieran