August 14, 2006
The biggest application crash I’ve ever seen
Posted Aug. 14, ’06, 1:06 PM PT by Scott Silverman
Category | Troubleshooting
Today is no ordinary day. Why, you ask? Well, have a look at the title. As of a few minutes ago, I have just experienced the biggest and most complete application crash I have ever seen on a Mac. The crash started when I opened an image with Photoshop CS2. It was taking unusually long to open the image, and it seemed as though the whole app was lagging. So I waited patiently, monitoring its progress (or lack thereof). A minute or so later, I came across the dialog box above, which reads:
Sorry, a serious error has been detected.
To continue using Adobe Photoshop, please reinstall the application.
Reinstall the application!??! That is one of the most complete crashes I have ever seen. I figured it was worth a shot trying to restart Photoshop, but upon launch, it only freezes and I’m forced to force quit. My favorite stuck-in-a-hole resource, the Apple Discussions page, revealed nothing as to my problem. As did both the Adobe help page and the Adobe User-to-User Forums.
What’s going on here? I thought Macs “didn’t” crash? Things are a bit fishy, and I have a feeling I’ll end up reloading my OS…
Update: As many users have pointed out, my Mac didn’t crash, rather the application did. I’ve also noted that the reason I will be reloading my OS is because I am using a Carbon Copy of my original OS from my old MacBook Pro. Some of the preference files must have been moved or corrupted during the clone, which is the cause this and other similar problems. Thanks to those who helped!30 Comments
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Which Mac is this? Did you ever restart the whole system since you bought it? LOL
I'm using a MacBook Pro. And of course I've restarted the system. What does restarting have to do with this application crash?
That's not that bad. A serious crash on a BSD/Linux-like OS would be a kernel panic. I've experienced that once when using a VERY beta version of Parallels. I just uninstalled it and then reinstalled and it started working again. It had something to do with the kernel extensions and the Cisco VPN I believe.
Anyways in your case it could be that some preference file became corrupt or perhaps Rosetta was having a bad day. Probably a reinstall of the app would be in order, but definitely NOT the OS. This isn't Windows after all. An OS reinstall would be neccessary if all the other apps on your system stopped working. Corrupting a BSD/Linux system like that is very rare.
OK, this weird, but... just reinstall the application. What this crash has to do with with the rest of the system?
That isn't really a "mac" crash, it's an application crash. I would assume that there is a corrupted file somewhere. You could try clearing the preferences out, or the cache files, maybe scan your fonts for corrupt ones, but it sounds like something is screwed up enough to just reinstall photoshop. I wouldn't bother reinstalling the whole system, since it really has nothing to do with that.
"What does restarting have to do with this application crash?"
It's a lot more logical than reinstalling the OS because of an application crash.
ouch
sounds like a job for DW at least.
never have had to re-install OS.
then again, I haven't heard of PS eating itself like that either.
The thing that I find scary about this is that Adobe are aware that it is possible for Photoshop to crash in such a way that it is necessary to reinstall it.
Have you tried trashing the Photoshop preference file (Adobe Photoshop CS2 Prefs.psp)?
It should solve your problem.
I haven't heard about this either! Is it safe to assume that you have tried the obvious, including tossing the preferences?
Have you tried deleting the preference file for Photoshop? I've found PS garbles its preferences quite frequently and this can do some odd things, from slightly annoying to "reinstall."
I did reinstall Photoshop a couple of weeks ago because of exactly that error message. One effect of the corruption was that the spash screen when Photoshop was started was actually the Space Monkey easter egg.
I also ended up with a severe harddisk corruption (not sure if that was caused by Photoshop, or if the Photoshop problems were caused by the hard disk problems). I had to use DiskWarrior to repair my disk.
I think it's suggesting you need to re-install Photoshop, not OS X. I had a similar message with a "borrowed" copy of InDesign CS on 10.3. Re-installing with an "original" app and weeding out the ol' preferences did the job then.
I am not surprised about the Photoshop crash. Until Adobe comes up with a universal binary, crashes like this will go on.
Did you open up Console and look at the crash log? Try this, open up Console, then launch photoshop, maybe the console logg will give you some sort of clue as to what is happening. Also look at the Crash log of Photoshop as well. Could just be a corrupted font.
"What’s going on here? I thought Macs 'didn’t' crash?"
The Mac didn't crash. Only one application crashed. The rest of the Mac, the Mac OS, was still running, as were all the other applications.
I don't think anyone, Apple or otherwise, claims that individual applications can't crash, because that stability depends on the individual developers.
I have had a couple crashes with CS2, never that message though. Some pretty stupid and useless ones though like, "Cannot continue because of an error". The problems were font related. Did you add any new fonts just before this?
...sounds like a job for DW at least.
DW doesn't support Intel machines.
I may be nitpicking here (and if I am, apologies), but I don't believe your Mac had crashed as you'd alluded to: 'I thought Macs “didn’t” crash?'
Based on your description, Mac OS X didn't crash. Rather, it was the application, Photoshop CS2, that had crashed.
In fact, IMHO, it's a credit to the stability of Mac OS X that it was able to present you with the error dialog box when Photoshop crashed, and even later allowed you to "Force Quit" the problematic application. I presume everthing else in you Mac (even other applications) could still work even after Photoshop's failure, right?
Anyway, application crashes can and will continue to happen regardless of the platform (e.g., Mac OS X, Windows, Linux) ... a badly designed app can be expected to crash and even a very well designed app may crash due to totally unforeseen and unprepared-for circumstances (which is probably what had happened in your case).
Perhaps Mac OS X's suggestion of a reinstall of Photoshop CS2 will solve this problem?
I'm a little confused, if your Mac crashed, how did you get a screenshot of the dialog box?
Second, agreeing with Aldrin, your comment about Macs not supposing to crash sounds a bit fishy to me also. All computers crash, some much less often than others.
Also, why would you reload the OS?
Incidentally, that wasn't an OS X error message. That was an error message from Photoshop/Adobe. OS X doesn't have an error message that suggests you reinstall an application to fix a crash.
Bot
Rosetta?
Anyway, Aldrin:
When quoting a quote, your quote uses "xx" and the original quote uses 'xx'. So it would look like this:
"I thought Macs 'didn’t' crash?"
I just had a similar incident with Photoshop CS, For no apparent reason the application seems to have become corrupted.
Whenever I try to create a new document I get the message; "Could not create new document because of a program error." and if I try to open a file I get the error; "Could not complete your request because of a program error".
Not sure what is happening there.
It's definitely an application crash and OS X is not affected at all.
Rather annoying.
This was on an iBook G3 800 Mhz by the way.
Thanks to all of you who have sympathized with my problem or provided advice (and yes, thanks to all you who provided rude sarcastic comments as well).
I should have provided more details about my situation in the original post, which may have cut some of the confusion over my statement that something is fishy and I'm going to reload the OS. Here's what I didn't tell you:
Tiger on my MacBook Pro is actually running off a Carbon Copied version of the system from my original MacBook Pro, which was replaced DOA by Apple. Ever since then, I have been running into little problems--problems like this one, like Excel not launching, Mail not searching all my messages, certain applications not launching at all, and other little things. With this fatal CS2 error, I decided it was better to just cut everything off once and for all by reloading the OS (which is easy, really) rather than fussing with a bunch of little problems. I should have included this information in the original post.
And lastly, my comment that I "thought Macs 'didn't' crash'", I still believe is completely valid. The majority of consumers (who will be the ones attracted to the "crash-proof" ads) would view any application crash as a crash of their computer--what we refer to as a Mac. Thus, while of course the OS is still running, there was still a crash which stopped my line of computing. Oh an by the way, even WIndows XP hardly crashes. OS-wide crashes are very rare.
yeah, that information would have been handy. Anyways, good luck with reinstalling your OS. I'm a pro at it with XP ;)
That comment that Macs don't crash is definitely NOT valid. There's nothing any OS can do to prevent app-level crashes due to shoddy programming on the app developer's part. However, what the OS provides is the safety barrier that prevents the entire system from going down due to one app crashing. You can't expect Apple to prevent other third-party apps from crashing. No one is perfect.
I wouldn't call Windows system crashes "rare". I've had my fair share of BSOD's due to rogue device drivers. And by your definition "any application crash (is) a crash of their computer" (what I call my PC). Every single time I play Oblivion on XP it crashes when I exit. Is that the fault of XP? It sure is 100X more crashes than I've experienced on my Mac.
I had a similar problem with InDesign and a cloned system, and it is likely being caused by mixed up permissions due to your Carbon Copied system.
I eventually had to do a clean install, because like you, I was having a lot of small problems. There is no reason why Adobe apps are so intolerant, but they are.
The clean install of OS X and a clean install of Adobe apps fixed the problem.
Pretty pathetic. I had the exact same problem on my MBP last week. I tossed the Photoshop preferences and restarted the machine. That was the last of that. Call this journalism? An unconscionable waste of bandwidth, more like.
Be nice, or go home. No one likes a jerk.
Scott, I agree with Ben C that your additional info about your using a "Carbon Copied" system would have provided us with the right context about the crash. Anyway, with my PPC Mac, I've never had any problems using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to save & restore whole-disk backups of my startup volume, even between Macs of the same or different models. Based on your account, I wonder whether CCC backups of Intel Macs may be less stable? Perhaps its time to check CCC's web site to see if this is an issue.
All the best with your Tiger re-install (which is still much less painful than a Windows XP re-install, right?).
Dan--the man, hmmmm, seems you see different quote marks than I do ... I still see the double-quotes around the word, “didn’t” in Scott's original entry.
My InDesign CS2 just crashed with the same error reinstall application error. I'm on an MBP and haven't had problems with CS2 other than the normal crashes CS2 is fond of. Anyways, I followed cassius' advice and pulled all of the Adobe preferences from the preferences folder and restarted. Everything seems to be working fine now. I'll know more this afternoon.
Now for the important stuff: this happened immediately after Adobe Updater did its thing. I wonder if the latest updates are hosing the preferences.