Elements: Organizer 11 periodically crashes with a message from Windows 7

Hello Bill, I'm afraid this existed already in PSE-10 because I'm hitting this problem quite regularly too. I've more the feeling that it's in combination with the refresh of the thumbnails and even only when these have a certain size, because when browsing through bigger sets of photos with the thumbnails small enough (but what's small enough?) I don't get this issue. When doing the same stuff with only 2 photos side by side then quite often I do encounter this crash too (when giving "enough" time, I seem to avoid this crash but again what's enough and when browsing in such a way I'm more in a hurry)

Hi Bill,

Please try following 2 things:
1) While launching Organizer, press Alt+Ctrl+Shift. A dialog will come asking you to delete the 'Elements Organizer' settings. Say 'Yes'.

Let us know if this fixes the issue.

2) If 1 doesn't work, then create a new Catalog and import some media and try.

Other queries:
1) What is your OS?
2) How many files are there in your Organizer?
3) What kind of video files are present?

Regards,
Ankur

Hi Rik,

Please try following:
1) Create a new Catalog and import some media and try.

Also, please share following info.
1) What is your OS?
2) What kind of files are present on either side when Organizer crashes?

Regards,
Ankur

Ankur,

Why would I want to do item 1)? There is really no way to verify that any approach "solves" the problem, since it is impossible to prove the absence of a defect. My problem may goes days or weeks between occurrences.

As stated in my initial post the OS is Windows 7. All Microsoft and Adobe updates have been applied. My organizer has 43,000+ files that it is tracking. I generally don't do video files but there are a few .avi and .mov files.

Hi Bill,

Agree to your point. I didn't provide an explanation earlier.
I am suspecting the crash in videos because of some rogue video codec on your system. Instead of item 1, please do the following:
- Launch Organizer
- Go to Edit Menu > Preferences > Files and uncheck 'Generate Thumbnails for Video Files'.

Did you try on a new catalog with some files? What were the results?

- Ankur

Ankur,

I will give the first suggestion, no thumbnails for video files, a try. It could take weeks for me to develop a sense as to whether this eliminates the problem or not. I was only seeing the crash infrequently and could not correlate it to a specific event. I might go a couple weeks without a problem and then have it happen two days in a row. Right now I'm in sort of a lull with my image processing so it's hard to say how much exposure PSE Organizer will get in the next month. For that reason it's not really that useful to create a new catalog. If I see the same crash after suppressing the video thumbnails that will tell us something.

Hello, Bill and Ankur~

I, too, am having a problem with Elements 11.0 Organizer crashing in Windows 7 - except that it's been happening consistently for the past three weeks or so. I installed the software on a new computer only in mid-November 2012, and it worked fine for a few weeks. As I imported more and more files (now up to about 63,000 - mostly jpg and psd files, but also avi and mov files), it became very flaky and began freezing up and crashing whether or not I had the Editor open. I could not pinpoint a single action that caused it to freeze, but it was usually simply perusing photos by scrolling quickly through them. Unlike Bill, I use the software nearly daily, and it was crashing each time I launched it, sometimes immediately, sometimes after several minutes. It became unusable. I tried Ankur's fix (unchecking 'Generate Thumbnails for Video Files'), rebooted and relaunched. Although the thumbnails still exist for the video files in the Organizer, I am cautiously optimistic that this has stopped the crashing issue. If it continues to crash, would you recommend removing the video files altogether from the Organizer? Thanks for your suggestion, and I'll report back as more time elapses.
Best regards,
-Dori

UPDATE to above: after unchecking the 'Generate Thumbnails for Video Files' box, the Elements 11.0 Organizer worked great for several hours, but it eventually crashed. Each time thereafter that I relaunched the software, it crashed within 2-3 minutes, all while scrolling thumbnails, much like Rik Kochuyt pointed out above. This never happened at all when I was using PSE 7.0 on an older XP machine which is no longer an option for me. Can you offer another solution, as this software is becoming more of a hassle than it's worth at this point?
Thank you, and best regards,
-Dori

Hello? Is anybody out there on this thread anymore? Has the Adobe employee Ankur Agrawal just given up?
-Dori

Hi, I've just noticed that you too were having problems with elements 11, do you have RoboForm running also on your pc? if yes, try switching it off and see how you go! if it now works close elements, go to RoboForm\options\application integration\ then add Photoshop elements application to the list. Elements and RoboForm clash for some reason. Hope this helps

Hi there. Wow, thank for replying! As I recall, I eventually removed all video files from the Elements Organizer, and I completely disabled the Auto Analyzer by un-checking all the boxes under Edit/Preferences/Media-Analysis. The software stopped crashing, but I am not certain which action solved the problem.
Best regards,
-Dori

I had this problem with Elements Organiser 11 that stopped working. The problem was on my computer, not with Elements. I downloaded BlackBerry Desktop Manager but it wolud not install properly ... that was the problem. Once I uninstalled BlackBerry Desktop Manager, then my Elements 11 worked like a song. Beautiful. I had to get professional help to sort out this problem. There is nothing wrong with Elements 11, look elsewhere on your computer for the bug. Uninstall programs that you downloaded after you installed Elements 11. Or go back to a Windows reset point. Enjoy Adobe's Elements, it's excellent, super, fantastic, great. Have a nice day.



It took me a damn hour to post this message. First I had to change my password, and log in a 100 times. This "security" is crap.

Hi Dirk. I do agree with you that Adobe sometimes doesn't play nicely with other software. My Elements installation was on a brand-new, just-out-of-the-box PC, however, and it was the first software I installed. It took quite a while and several attempts to get my old Elements 7.0 Organizer converted and working in Elements 11.0, but it eventually loaded. I was worried that the conversion from 7.0 or the sheer size of my file was at the root of the problem, but as I wrote above, disabling Elements' Auto Analyzer and/or keeping video files out of the Organizer solved the freezing/crashing issue completely. Yes, it's at the expense of not being able to manage my videos in the same organizer as my photos, but that doesn't bother me. I don't doubt you're correct that something else on my computer is affecting those elements of Elements. I love the Adobe Organizer, too. I just crossed the 80,000 mark, and it now works flawlessly for tagging, dating, searching. You, too, have a great day!

How can you fix this problem if you cannot open elements to start with.

OMG