Procaster and CS2 repeated crash issue

[Waffleguppies]

I hope someone can help. I'm at the end of my rope with this problem, which is effectively stopping me from using Photoshop CS2 while Procaster is running- and that's pretty much all I want to use it for!

My PC is a Dell Vostro 200 with 3GB RAM, running Windows Vista Service Pack 1, 32-bit. I'm using a Medion MD 9570 USB graphics tablet with CS2. The tablet has some issues with Procaster- basically, pen pressure disables itself if I start Procaster before CS2 is running, but if I start CS2 first it's usually okay.

When I'm running Procaster and CS2 at the same time, my memory usage seems to be at around 50% according to Task Manager.

The problem is that when I try to do anything slightly memory-intensive in CS2, like use meduim-to-large brushes or brushes other than the basic set, or paint with fast brushstrokes, CS2 will crash. It crashes every couple of minutes every time I try to use it with Procaster, and after about 3 crashes it usually comes back with an error message every time I try to start it back up, saying that the error is unrecoverable. After that, the only way to get CS2 started at all is to restart the machine.

This is incredibly frustrating, especially as I bought an extra GB of memory purely to try and fix this issue. The fact that an extra GB didn't seem to do anything made me wonder if it's a memory issue at all. I really hope someone can help!

[ernielive]

Waffleguppies,

Your computer is slightly underpowered to run two intensive applications such as Photoshop and Procaster. Addtionally, Procaster requires a minimum of 4GB of RAM as detailed in our user guide.

Which quality setting are you encoding? You could try dropping it lower to decrease use of your machine's resources. I'd also recommend updating to the latest beta version of Procaster, disabling the local recording feature (Preferences > Desktop > Save video to file), and closing all other programs you may have running in the background to improve overall performance.