Photoshop 7 Problem in Windows

I recently found a error that caused me to loose alot of my work and forced me to format my system. I rember someone asking me about this problem and I set out to solve it. It is caused indirectly by Photoshop 7 (mabey other versions). The strange thing is that it is very common and can render your system unstable. This will make you lose any unsaved work on your system and may corrupt files.

This bug is caused by the windows explorer and photoshop confilcting over handling image formats, especially thumbnails. In other words photoshop wants to open a file and windows wants to too. They conflict and the system crashes.

This problem is apparent when you open a folder containing images opens. This will hang your windows explorer, it will crash, then reset. During this time your screen will go blank and then your desktop will reappear but all programs that were active would have dissapeared, all unsaved work is lost! Then a windows error message pops up or you get the blue screen (Win98). Also your programs that have access to these folders will randomly crash, if you open this folder in paint, photoshop (oh the irony!!!), or and other image viewer it will crash. Also any programs dependant on folders will crash as they access them (peer to peer shared folders).

If you are having this problem, changing the File Types property in folder options will NOT work. This is the only solution to it, uninstall photoshop, reinstall but don't allow it to be the default file viewer for any common file type (especially, *.JPEG, *.BMP,*.GIF, *.TIFF) only allow it to open the *.PSD format. The crashes will then stop. If you don't have this problem then keep in mind the next time you install it you may.

This only affects windows operating systems 98, Me, 2000, XP. It is apparent when you update from XP SP1 to SP2.
Just needed to get this info out, because it apparently is very common and sucks when you don't know what's causing it.

Please post any other info you need about this problem and how to solve it.

GoldEagle