Bridge problem in Vista

I was not sure where to post this, but after loads of thinking, I am sure that the problem is being caused by something in the Vista file structure on the evil machine, and not by Bridge.

A very strange problem! I have two machines both running Vista Home Premium. One is a BOAC, Athlon 64 x 2 4200, the other is a recently purchased Acer Aspire 9300, Turion 64 x 2. I have Photoshop CS3 installed on both machines, both have 2 GB DDR installed. The Acer was bought with a French Vista installed as I live in France.

On the BOAC, Bridge in CS 3 works perfectly, but on the Acer it is unusable. What happens is this:
Open Bridge, browse to any folder of photographs, click to open the file, the thumbnails start to appear, then Bridge produces a pop-up screen "ERROR: The operation could not be completed "
Bridge is then frozen, clicking on the OK in the error pop-up erases it, but another appears immediately, and the only escape is to close Bridge using the Task Manager. One oddity is that sometimes continous clicking on the error pop-ups will manage to call up a few thumbnails at each click, and eventually the folder will be fully open. Large folders or raw or dng will never open.

Thinking that it may be being caused by all the Acer add-on software, I installed an OEM Vista in English, which has none of the Acer stuff on it, but the problem is still there.

I downloaded the problem folders to an external hard disk, and Bridge will open them and browse just like it should! I have run Check Disk which found no problem, and Photoshop and Lightroom run perfectly on the same folders which break Bridge.

I'm getting desperate and have run out of ideas - can anyone suggest something to try? Come on Pete ! ! !

Roger

 

Sounds to me like Bridge is the problem, meaning sounds like Bridge is accessing hardware directly rather than using the OS, and Acer hardware is differeint than that of the BOAC. Have you tried running in compatability mode on the Acer? RT-clk and go to properties and then compatability tab.

 

Update News!

I had already posted on the Adobe Bridge forum Pete, but no response so far.
I have proved to my own satisfaction though that the problem lies somewhere in the file structure of the partition where my pictures live.

First I used TI to make an image of the problem partition on an external HD. Bridge could than access all the picture files, but the pictures would only open in CS3. Presumably Bridge could not cope with the compressed files produced by TI.

Then I copied the image files, folder by folder to C:\Users\...\Pictures. Bridge worked perfectly with these copied files in their new location!

I now plan to format the problem partition, run checkdisk again, and then move the folders back.
I have the Lightroom catalogue on a USB HD just in case something breaks.

Fingers crossed ! ! !

Roger

 

Well it worked Pete. Formatted the 60 gb partition causing the problem, ran checkdisk, which took about an hour but found no problems, and reloaded the picture folders.
Bridge now works just as it should. What does surprise me is that Bridge was the only programme to have a problem with those folders. CS3, Lightroom, and even Explorer opened them as normal.
Now to tell the Bridge forum!

Roger