don26812 Loc: South Bay of Los Angeles, CA

Many useful comments here. Beyond tweaking settings, I personally would max out the RAM in my PC, with max being the operative word here. I suspect that is around 16 Gb, maybe more. RAM is pretty cheap now, and is easy to install for the non-skilled user. You can keep PSE 10 installed along with PSE 18. I do not think you will have much luck returning PSE 18. It has been improved tremendously since PSE 10. I would concentrate on upgrading my laptop to accommodate PSE 18 requirements, which are not that stringent. FWIW

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

Sounds like you system is under memory and may have some other issues. If the disk is fragmented and will not defrag, there is some other potential issues. Been a long time since I have had to defrag a disk, in the past I would bring the system up in safe mode to minimize any aps running and more memory available, and then try the defrag. You may want to clean up you recycle bin first. To note, all the files you erase, really just go to the recycle bin in case you need to recover a file. If you have stuff, especially large files hanging around, it will help to get rid of them. Maybe free up some room to defrag.

4 meg is bare bones for photography. What many application writers do to speed up running, is load more stuff in memory. Files, especially photos are growing rapidly in just about every new iteration of models. When you need to edit a large raw or jpg it needs to get into memory so it can massage it quickly. In addition, the speed of you memory/cpu/etc is is also a factor.

This may the light bulb that you need a newer faster machine.

sbelle

Had same problem with PS 2018. However, the problem is not with Elements. It is a problem with the windows 10 April update. The fix is relatively easy, but you will have to modify the registry. Google Photoshop Elements RAM fix, and you should find step by step instructions to correct the issue. I followed the instructions and have not had a problem since!


https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-performance/photoshop-ram-error-in-the-1803-update-of-windows/c45ed920-81ce-4bae-a7b5-151a056d2cfc

ChaplainPlato Loc: Florida

This is likely due to the Windows upgrade or reboot of whatever that June Birthday colossus was that came to be. I have the same trouble with an older machine; a laptop. My AMD monster, work only, editor got a little squirrelly too and it's rocking 32gigs, but that had to do with --- ya know how Windows 'll release stuff while it should still be in BETA? yea, it took me two overnights to get it back to normal. The laptop, no; RAM ERROR -- every time I go to "Save-As" "Not Enough Memory (RAM)" so the new metrics of this edition of windows is so fat that ram is being abused by it. I didn't read anything else in this thread as I had already chased this for the last week (had a long line of stuff ahead if it) --So I hope what I've written isn't redundant if it is, I apologise, but know I feel great knowing that someone else is fighting the good fight!
PS, this shot is from better times back in April before the world was turned upside-down by Microsoft #RAM Bullies!

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Easy enough to check. Just open performance monitor and look at the memory and processor utilization PER process. You’ll quickly see what process, wheteher Windows, an application, or? Is using your resources and to what extent, and if there’s an issue.

Not long ago, I noticed that my CPU utilization was idling at ~50%. Turns out that an Adobe Flashplayer update had embedded an application from Adobe that uses the customer’s PC to distribute updates to other PCs as a background task (thus using YOUR computer time/performance instead of Adobe’s servers).it was a bitch to get rid of, automatically restarted every time I disabled it, and Windows wouldn’t allow me to delete it, so I renamed its subdirectory so it couldn't find it or start after rebooting and then finally successfully deleted it. The computer returned to its usual 2-3% CPU utilization, and now I never allow Flash to update. My point is that it’s not always Windows that causes issues - a little in-depth investigation can often point to the true culprit.

ChaplainPlato Loc: Florida