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QUESTION: When I tried to open a file I had just saved, I got the following message:
Could not complete your request because the file-format module cannot parse the file.
Huh? I have no idea what that means. I was able to go back in and open the file, but I don't know what that means. I don't want to go any further on my project if I won't be able to open it in the future.
ANSWER: I searched that phrase and got lots of different results. It looks like something in Photoshop Elements (PSE) got corrupted, and the solution is to reset PSE to the factory defaults. I would suggest you search it and read through what you find before resetting as I just breezed through the answers.
ANSWER: Sometimes, when I see this one, it means that I have burned through my RAM and I need to reboot my computer. Once I do that, I'm ready to roll again. Other times, the file has gone bad. Thankfully, that is rare.
ANSWER: Rebooting usually works for me as well.
RESPONSE: Thanks to all! That seemed to have solved my problem for the moment. I desperately need to figure out how to store my pictures and scrap files. My computer is filling up very, very quickly, and I have been seeing weird things happen more frequently. Off to the equipment forum to read about external hard drives!
QUESTION: I am getting this message when I start up PSE 7:
Could not load the styles because the scratch disks are full.
What are scratch disks? Do I have too many styles loaded? I certainly hope not because I have more in my cart! Do I need to get more memory for my computer?
ANSWER: I have gotten that message before. For PSE to work, there has to be enough empty space on your disk for it to use as what it calls a "scratch disk." If your computer disk is too full, that is the error message you get.
I deleted some unused programs, defragged, and then ran a disk compression (which took days).
The easier way to do that is to find an external hard drive that has enough space on it and tell PSE to use that as the scratch disk. I wish I knew how to do that! It would have saved me a lot of time and aggravation. Hopefully, someone who knows will come along.
ANSWER: I didn't find it real quickly. But you can set the memory usage under Edit> Preferences> Performance. There's a slider that you can move left and right to set it. PSE7 and PSE8 tell you the ideal range to be in. That may help also.
ANSWER: You basically need to clear some disk space; it means you don't have enough space left to run your version of PSE. It needs a certain amount of free disk space to function properly. If you run Vista, do a disk cleanup and clear out your cookies, shadow version saves, etc.! This will help a lot.
ANSWER: I did find this online:
When your system does not have enough RAM to perform an operation, Photoshop Elements uses scratch disks. A scratch disk is any drive or partition of a drive with free memory. By default, Photoshop Elements uses the hard drive on which the operating system is installed as its primary scratch disk.
You can change the primary scratch disk or designate a second, third, or fourth scratch disk to be used when the primary disk is full. Your primary scratch disk should be your fastest hard disk and have plenty of defragmented space available.
For best performance, use the following guidelines when assigning scratch disks:
Scratch disks should not be on the same physical drive as Photoshop Elements or any large files you are editing.
Scratch disks should not be on the same physical drive as the one used for the operating system's virtual memory.
Scratch disks should be on a local drive. That is, they should not be accessed over a network.
Scratch disks should be conventional (non-removable) media.
RAID disks/disk arrays are good choices for dedicated scratch disk volumes.
Drives with scratch disks should be defragmented regularly. Or better yet, use an empty drive or a drive with plenty of unused space to avoid fragmentation issues.
Then I found this also:
Photoshop Elements needs contiguous hard drive space to create a scratch disk. For this reason you should frequently defragment your hard drive. Adobe recommends that you use a disk tool utility, such as Windows Disk Defragmenter, to defragment your hard drive on a regular basis. See your Windows documentation for information on defragmentation utilities.
In the Editor, choose Edit> Preferences> Performance.
Select the desired disks from the Scratch Disks menu (you can assign up to four scratch disks), and click OK.
Restart Photoshop Elements for the change to take effect.
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