King & desperber:OK, I carefully read through your last posts. I can see you really spent some time putting this down.
Although it does involve doing something most "ordinary" users don't ever get involved with (i.e. those who "buy pre-built machines with Windows pre-installed") I'm simply suggesting doing (which also requires learning something new, which can obviously be worthwhile) what many of us here are quite familiar with, namely doing a "complete reinstall of Windows including customization, along with a complete reinstall of all 3rd-party vendor software products". Occasionally something get corrupted in the Windows system and this is just the only way to recover.
Doesn't always happen, some people used to do it with WinXP every 6 months (seemed almost unavoidable)! But Win7 is remarkably solid and stable, and complete reinstalls only seems to become necessary when it's your "final resort" to cure some problem that we all know should NOT be happening but that just cannot be fixed (like your magenta issue... which obviously MUST be extremely rare with respect to the total number of Photoshop users, and since your Windows Photo Gallery program is identifcally affected must obviously be due to something more "global" in your system that is not Photoshop).
As far as what one does to perform a "complete reinstall from scratch", these are well known procedures with standard preliminary steps. Most common of course is to take a "backup" (generally, in TWO forms for Win7: (a) "system image", and (b) "data backup"). You don't want to lose anything as a result of the reinstall, which will no doubt probably take several days or more depending on how many 3rd-party software products you have, how many hard drives and/or partitions you have and therefore where your "data" lives and thus is it "immune" to your Win7 reinstall or not, etc. In other words the complexity of your current system certainly impacts how and how long a new fresh reinstall from scratch will take.
But every new reinstall MUST always be preceded by the appropriate backup actions to guarantee 100% that you do not lose ANY data (pictures, videos, documents, music, etc.) as that would obviously make you cry if the data were irreplaceable.
The steps you mention on partitioning my HD etc are above my comprehension today
Partitioning a single hard drive is very easy and straightforward, especially using the fine free product named
Partition Wizard (which has a non-free "professional" version as well that contains a few special features) although obviously if you've never done it before it can be conceptually frightening.
But taking backups to a second partition on your one and only drive is actually NOT the recommended approach in my opinion. Far simpler, and MUCH SAFER, is to spend a few dollars on an external USB drive (1TB or 2TB depending on your data requirements), ideally USB 3.0 compatible if your machine supports it although USB 2.0 will work fine just slower (you can even install an add-on USB 3.0 PCIe adapter card for almost nothing, which is well worth the few dollars if backup/restore elapsed time is meaningful to you).
It is a MUCH better technique to backup to a second drive (either internal, or external USB for convenience). And this drive can be used for both (a) "system image" as well as (b) "data folder/file" backups (which makes recovery of specific lost or corrupted data very straightforward). Highly recommended is the very fine non-free
Macrium Reflect Standard product which can do BOTH forms of backup flawlessly and is very very easy to use. The product does come in a FREE version, but the missing features make it WELL WORTH the $45 price for the STANDARD version in my opinion.
although I can do the clean reinstall of Windows, but as you pointed out there will be many peripherals to reinstall. When I upgraded to Windows 7 it took 2 full days to get everything running again.
Your multi-day experience is not at all unusual. Some of us aren't stable with our complete reinstalls for a week or more. And doing this if you're a DIY'er and have built a new machine with new hardware, well those projects take even longer to complete as they require "workshop" construction (upgraded new case possibly, new motherboard, new video card, new memory, new hard drives, etc.) before you can even power on for the first time (assuming you've already "smoke tested" your construction during the process) to start the actual Win7 install.
But yes, it will take time to get yourself back to where you want to end up. Everything you did before, you'll have to re-do, to get software products reinstalled. But with experience one learns just HOW to minimize the effort to reinstall software products. Very often there are INI files or data folders you might not have ever been aware of which represent your current installed state for that product. So if you have the right backup, and if you know where it is now (and therefore where it will go again after your new reinstall), very often you can "pre-plant" it in the same target location even before you run the product's INSTALLER (e.g. SETUP.EXE). Very often the installer will sense the pre-existence of a previous installation and will simply "absorb" it immediately, so that you don't have to do anything further (or at least not much, if you're lucky).
This is what experience in this type of project will gain you.
So, today, I completely uninstalled CS5 and reinstalled it. With the first new photo transition from Windows7>Pictures>Bridge into PS things looked good, but after a few seconds the magenta was right back as before. !@%$!
PREZACTLY!
This is exactly and precisely why sometimes, as a last resort no doubt, it just sometimes becomes necessary to use that "complete from-scratch cold reinstall" opportunity into a brand new empty hard drive partition as your ONLY "final solution", which is pretty much GUARANTEED TO WORK to eliminate those otherwise unsolvable problems. Sometimes there is residual Windows Registry corruption (which never should have occurred in the first place obviously) that is NOT cured simply by uninstalling the software using the vendor's uninstall functionality.
Believe me, Adobe could never sell Photoshop if every user had your magenta problem. And yet, at least a small number of Photoshop users apparently DOES have the magenta problem. But why do you also have it in Windows Photo Gallery but not Photo Viewer?? Who knows? And... WHO CARES?? Just try a full reinstall of Win7 and see if that fixes the problem.
And if it does fix the problem, then keep monitoring the symptom for reappearance as you continue with your several days of software reinstall. If it's tied to the Epson printer, it might reappear, or it might not (that's my guess... that it will NOT reappear).
If the fresh reinstall somehow does not fix the problem, well you can always choose to restore the "system image" backup you took to begin the process, which will put your EXACTLY right back where you started from the one very simple fairly quick "restore". It will have been a few days in a time-warp, and you're right back where you started with just those few days lost.
I'm going to print-out the last posts you both sent me and then speak to the Computer Help Desk at the University so I really know the details of what you suggested. (I work at the University of Illinois in Champaign Ill.) If I still can not "figure-it-out", then I'll take my CPU to an IT specialist and pay for what you suggested. We're talking about at least a week of fun, and if I do need this specialist it will be up to his schedule too.
You can certainly get lots of support from us more experienced users here on SevenForums who've "been there, done that" many many times.
Obviously based on your time and availability, you could pay a "professional" to do this for you, or you could just "take it slow" (since this is your first time) and learn how to do it yourself. Certainly having an external USB backup drive for both "system image" and "data folder/file" backups is something you should actually have RIGHT NOW, and be using.
And you really can't find better more reasonably priced (i.e. free or minimal) products for what you need than the highly regarded Partition Wizard and Macrium Reflect software products. Running daily or weekly or monthly regular backups (FULL, INCREMENTAL, and IMAGE, all automatically scheduled with automatic space management so that older generations automatically get deleted based on your own "retention policy" based on how critical your data is) to a relatively inexpensive USB 3.0 (or 2.0) external drive... well, this is how ANY smart computer user should be operating anyway.
I've even considered just buying a new CPU
Well that's certainly one way to get a complete from-scratch Win7 (or Win8, which I know nothing about) reinstall. But unless you WANT to go through a hardware cost upgrade this isn't necessary to solve the magenta problem, assuming your current hardware is perfectly acceptable.
That's why my suggestion of (a) take a "system image" backup, so you can easily recover if you have to or just want to at the other end of a few days out there fooling with a win7 reinstall, and (b) learn how to do a from-scratch Win7 reinstall, and then almost immediately after getting a basic Win7 working do a Photoshop reinstall and see if your magenta problem has disappeared. You'll then know how to proceed appropriately from there.
but then I suppose I'd need to buy clean new versions of CS5(6)
Actually, not.
Assuming you have a "retail" license key product you can just uninstall Photoshop first from your current machine, which "phones home" and deactivates your license key on this hardware.
Then you can use the same retail license key to install the same Photoshop on your new hardware. The retail license allows one machine at a time, but not limited to just one machine ever. OEM versions provided with your machine purchase are a different matter.
If you bought a machine retail (e.g. from Lenovo, etc.) it would GUARANTEED come with its own pre-installed Win7/8 and an OEM license for that Windows software on THAT piece of hardware. Unless your current Windows was purchased retail, a pre-installed OEM version of Windows cannot be transferred to a different machine. You would not be able to reinstall from scratch on a second machine using the OEM license product key from your current vendor's machine.
But would I dare connect the Epson printer to this new system?
Of course you would. Again, do you think Epson would be in business if every user of their printers had a magenta color issue?
I just suggest it's reasonably possible that there was some Registry Corruption that happened to your current system, in conjunction with your "calibration" (i.e. Colormunki) actions that no doubt created ICC color profiles for use with your monitor and/or printer (and which certainly seems like the "candidate" for that "global unknown" which can affect not only Photoshop but also other independent products like Windows Photo Gallery).
And I suggest that if you do NOT do anything unusual to begin with, but just reinstall Windows and Photoshop to start, and test your JPG, I believe you will NOT see the magenta problem.
But, as you continue to reinstall more and more software, checking for the magenta problem at each step (with backups taken at reasonable multiple points along the way so that you don't have to go back too far to re-stabilize, if/when the magenta problem reappears and you now know EXACTLY what caused it), I propose you will "emerge victorious".
In my opinion the magenta symptom is NOT NORMAL, and should NOT be something that every Photoshop or Photo Gallery user ever sees... EVER! Something strange happened on your system that now seems impossible to back out, and in my opinion this IS one of those clear justifications for a fresh from-scratch Win7 reinstall.
Take a vacation amigos, I shall return, in about a week. Steve
We'll be here when you get back.
And we can help you through a Windows reinstall.
But go out and buy an external USB drive, and those two software products I recommend. Learn how to use them, get yourself setup with a regular backup scheme (believe me, you will NOT ever regret this particular effort!), and you will then be able to dive into learning how to do a Windows reinstall.
