Hardware conflicts cause troubleshooting frustration.
To find the source of unusual behavior in Adobe Photoshop, you must determine whether your problem stems from the software and its preferences, your operating system or your computer hardware. If you rule out software and operating system problems, you may wind up pointing the figure at your hardware as the culprit in your troubleshooting. To think through a hardware problem, examine your system in light of its likeliest trouble spots.
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The most basic hardware conflict lies in a system configuration that fails to meet software requirements. Adobe Photoshop places significant demands on computer hardware. Like most applications, its needs range from minimum to recommended configurations. At the minimum end of the compliance scale, you may see slow performance or be unable to work on large, high-resolution files. If you fall below the minimum system demands established by Adobe Systems, you won't be able to install or run the software.
Older video cards often fail as demanding applications update their system requirements. Your video adapter itself may not be the problem, but if its manufacturer fails to provide driver software capable of supporting the card in the configuration you need for Photoshop compatibility, you may need to look for new hardware. At that the point, you may also need to update other system components, all the way up to your motherboard and processor.
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Just as new computer hardware and operating systems can orphan your peripheral hardware, so can powerful applications like Adobe Photoshop. Your scanner joins the list of hardware-compatibility suspects when its driver software fails to work with Photoshop. If you can't find updated drivers, either through your scanner manufacturer or from another source, you may be forced to use your scanner on another system or replace it altogether. Otherwise, your scanner will conflict with Photoshop and even cause it to crash.
If you're accustomed to working on and saving your Photoshop files to a remote networked volume, you may find your work practices changing. Because Photoshop accesses your image-file data as you work, your network hardware may be unable to provide the throughput necessary to keep Photoshop working at full speed. It's also risky to save files, especially large ones, to a network drive because of the possibilities of data loss and corruption. Adobe Systems recommends saving your files to your local hard drive and copying them to your networked volume.
