Windows 7: Memory problem, can't work with Photoshop

Hello,

I'm asking on behalf of a friend who bought a new Lenovo TC M91p 2 months ago. Since then she is not able to work with Photoshop. First she had a Photoshop CS2, then installed a Photoshop CS4.



This is what she writes about the problem (first she tells me how she did things on her broken Acer running XP to show me how things should work, then she describes the problems with the Lenovo running Windows 7 x64:

"With the Acer I do this:
I open PS and then click 'open'.
I browse to the folder I need (I have most files on a 2 Terra external HDD)
The Acer starts loading the thumbnails, but I can go straight to the file, click on it and in about 10 seconds, it shows me the thumbnail (where other files surrounding it are not yet showing and the files are still loading) If it's what I need, I just click on it and it starts to open.

With the Lenovo, however, it starts loading the thumbnails, but from there on, I can't do anything at all. If I accidently click an image (since I'm used to that) the system freezes competely and it never unfreezes. Also, during the loading, it often does not have enough memory and then the program also freezes. I can only quit using control alt delete, but it takes at least 10 minutes before the program closes (but otherwise it won't close at all, not will it open)
The only workaround is to copy the file I need to an empty folder and open it from there. The problem, however, is that I will first need to get to the file, using the same technique as described above (unless I know the name of the file, which hardly ever happens as I leave them numbered as they come out of the camera)

And even when I'm able to get a file opened, I can't work on it, as I have no memory left. It caches everything and never empties the cache. I had not used the PC at all, just opened photoshop and had it load. Then twenty minutes later, we looked again and it had 24 folders loaded (and still 53 to go plus about 75 single tiff files). I had not done anything, only wanted to open a file. This was two hours ago and now my memory is still only 65 and I have not even touched the PC, other then the emails to you."

She wrote something more about how a friend tried to fix the problem but was not able to resolve the issue:
"He changed the way the PC responds (to either programs or processes) It had a focus on programs before, but now it's on processes. It does not make a difference though."


She has 8 GB of RAM, so that is plenty for working with Photoshop. But it seems the PC loads everything in its cache but is not able to work. Any help would be very welcome.

I can see straight off that something is seriously eating away at the Ram 7020 in cached is a serious amount and not healthy and you can also see that there is only 65 remain memory which will explain why Photoshop is failing to function properly
My suggestions to start are to run a few Malware scans ect..... Malware Bytes and Spybot, Search and destroy and run a Virus scan (I recommend Avast over any other antivirus)
I also suggest you run start-up configurations too Startup Programs - Change remove all unnecessary startup items

Thank you for your reply. I forwarded the information to my friend and she replied meanwhile.

The computer has been checked regarding viruses and malware, but there is no positive result. And as I wrote: it is brand new and was checked and double checked to find a solution for the caching problem.

In addition my friend wrote:
"It won't be anything in the startup as the memory is okay after booting the PC and it works just fine as long as I don't work with big files or transferring a lot of files. I.e. I don't have to use Photoshop to get cache issues. Transfering files from one drive to another gives the same issues."

Is there something that we can do about it? Any help is greatly appreciated. This story goes on now for 2 months and we can't find out how to work with this new PC.

My friend wrote me the following information:
"As long as I work with little files it's doing fine, but I have to make sure I load stuff from a nearly empty folder."

Assuming that there is some unknown issue with thumbnails, what about disabling thumbnails? It's a dirty workaround but may save the day.

On the default "save/load/whatever a file small Win 7" window there is a icon to the left of the help icon (blue dot). If you click on the small black triangle to the right of it, a bar with various options appears, choose "details" or something similar and never see the thumbnails from that screen again.

Hmmm, this is pretty obvious signal that there is an issue in handling mass storage devices, the above workaround isn't going to fix that. Bad drivers, wrong BIOS settings, or maybe even faulty HDD/parts.

Which explains why an Acer was outperforming a Lenovo.

To see if it is bad drivers you must go to the Device manager and look at the HDDs, if the name of the disk is something generic and not a bunch of letters and numbers with a manufacturer name, then you may have driver issues. It would be that Windows 7 uses its generic drivers so the HDD is kinda usable, but won't work very well because it wants its own drivers.

As for bios settings I always had to "spray and pray" so to speak. Alter a setting that you think may have something to do about HDDs (usually they are kept together), and see how it runs after booting Windows 7.
Of course I don't think you should do that (my guesses are more educated than yours as I have more experience ). You can ruin it if you don't have some experience in fixing computers.

If it's a faulty HDD then check it with crystalMark or whatever other disk-testing software you like.

Ps: I add this as a sidenote because I really don't think it's the case for a Lenovo lappy, I had in my hands a couple desktops with the same issues and it was due to the motherboard's ATA speed being 1.5 Gbit while the HDD speed was 3 Gbit. Jumper on the HDD set correctly and it dialed down the speed to 1.5 Gbit, problem solved.

Thank you for your messages so far. The IT-person helping my friend is in vacancies now for 3 weeks. So we save the information we get to see how far we come without his porfessional help and later we do the more complicated stuff when he returns.
I'm living several hundred km away, so it's not possible that I quickly run over and try stuff myself. But many many thanks for your suggestions!