Keith
10-27-200627th October 2006, 07:53 PM
I built a new computer several months ago, a dual processor with 4gb's of memory and I really saw no difference in performance in the big scheme of things. Adobe PSCS2 was only seeing 2gb's of ram less my 256mb on board video card. I stumbled on many articles around this and found that 32bit processors only read 2gbs, but one could change the boot.ini file to 3gbs. Well have to say it works like a charm.
A big thank you to Larry Burk/ E.J Parker on Naturescapes who posted links to Microsoft's knowledge base that leads us to a very effective fix to the 2GB memory problem in Photoshop for systems that become unstable or cannot load the boot kernel of Windows with the /3GB switch enabled.
READ THE FOLLOWING COMPLETELY BEFORE ATTEMPTING THIS FIX!!!
By adding the following to the boot.ini file:
/userva=2800 /3GB
This temporarily gives the OS an extra 200MB of RAM for address space during boot-up. This problem effects primarily systems with graphics cards that have 128KB or more onboard RAM and other devices that require address space.
So the last line in your BOOT.INI file should look like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /userva=2800 /3GB
(note only add what is in bold - DO NOT change anything else even if it looks different than the line above)
If 2800 still causes your system to have problems, boot in safe mode and lower it to 2700 then 2600, etc until it works. My system is heavily loaded so I suspect that 2800 will fix the problem for 95% of those having problems.
PhotoShop will now see 100% of the RAM minus what the OS reserves. Even though 1gb is enough to run everything else, I would not recommend increasing the ram % in PSCS2 over 80%. Because if you use Adobe Bridge and CS2 you require the resources. Many articles stated 90-100% but I didnt find that.
OKAY thats the first part, where I really gained in CS2 speed is changing my larger tiles in my PHotoshop file folders......... here is a link you can read. My performanced immediately increased well over 30% !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Understand you must be working with a minimum of 2GB's of RAM. Take the time to read the link below.
Im very pleased now finally dance; dance; dance;
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/320005.html
A big thank you to Larry Burk/ E.J Parker on Naturescapes who posted links to Microsoft's knowledge base that leads us to a very effective fix to the 2GB memory problem in Photoshop for systems that become unstable or cannot load the boot kernel of Windows with the /3GB switch enabled.
READ THE FOLLOWING COMPLETELY BEFORE ATTEMPTING THIS FIX!!!
By adding the following to the boot.ini file:
/userva=2800 /3GB
This temporarily gives the OS an extra 200MB of RAM for address space during boot-up. This problem effects primarily systems with graphics cards that have 128KB or more onboard RAM and other devices that require address space.
So the last line in your BOOT.INI file should look like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /userva=2800 /3GB
(note only add what is in bold - DO NOT change anything else even if it looks different than the line above)
If 2800 still causes your system to have problems, boot in safe mode and lower it to 2700 then 2600, etc until it works. My system is heavily loaded so I suspect that 2800 will fix the problem for 95% of those having problems.
PhotoShop will now see 100% of the RAM minus what the OS reserves. Even though 1gb is enough to run everything else, I would not recommend increasing the ram % in PSCS2 over 80%. Because if you use Adobe Bridge and CS2 you require the resources. Many articles stated 90-100% but I didnt find that.
OKAY thats the first part, where I really gained in CS2 speed is changing my larger tiles in my PHotoshop file folders......... here is a link you can read. My performanced immediately increased well over 30% !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Understand you must be working with a minimum of 2GB's of RAM. Take the time to read the link below.
Im very pleased now finally dance; dance; dance;
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/320005.html