Bacardi

Hi there,

What I can suggest is to contact Wacom England. All in the beginning I did have a problem with the numbers on the upper side replacing my cursor and in a very friendly manner they explained every step I had to take.

I just say this because I am very reluctant to suggest you delete the Wacom and pentools keys in the registry...

I suppose that the first software install is still the cause of the problems.
About your memory for PS: 65% is reaaly more than enough.
In fact: Win98 can't really handle more than 128MB of SDRam. More to it is just plenty and it takes its percentage, not the quantity it needs.

Whe you contact Wacom, it might be useful to write down exactly what and when it happens.
Do you have problems when using it with other software, does it crash when painting, cloning, what screen resolution do you use, what is the MB of your video card, is it video on board, Matrox, GeFORCE, ATI Radeon, how are your systems resources (this is not RAM, but the memory Win uses for the graphic and hardware interface,...etc.
About these Systems Resources: Go to Control Panel, system and then you see a tab with your configuration. Here you can see how much of your resources are eaten up by software running in the background. Software like your Wacom, a virus scanner, progs you installed and also maybe even spyware.

To know what is running you can either go to google and search for Karens Powertools, or you can try MSCONFIG which gives you all the things that are starting up.
You can also press Ctrl+Alt+Del once to get a list of what is running.
My idea, these resources are often the cause of crashes etc...

To get rid of spyware, look for AdAware and get the latest file.

You can also run defrag after deleting all rubbish you find in the TIF and Temp folders.
It's also a good idea to clear your HDD once a year and have a fresh re-install of Windows. But do make a complete backup!!!

Success

I only know PS6 (a bit that is), so I can't really help with version 5.

About the memory setting for the tablet: Win automatically allocates memory to the hardware, so there is no setting like there is one on the Mac.

ToXin

Thanks for the in depth list of things to check Erik.

I do semi-regular disk maintenance, about once every 2 weeks, and I'm also running Norton's Crashguard which is saving my work from being lost most of the time.

I'm going to go through the suggestions made by you all again, carefully, from the beginning and try to nail this. [righton]

rosebytes

Rose here on Windows but I am still on 95 with Intuos 2 pen and 4D mouse via parallel. I don't think I can help much but I had a very difficult install...had to attempt installing 6 or 7 times before it would go in and stop saying "unable to install".

I have always blamed that initial install for the freezing problems I still sometimes get and so have to agree with Erik about the initial software install causing problems. When I turn the computer on I see the Wacom load in then quickly disappear then load in again...sometimes it tries to load in a third time and when this happens (which is at the exact time my scanner is loading in) the computer freezes up and I have to turn it off and then on again.
I use my graphics pen for everything and in Photoshop and Painter and rarely have any probs with it freezing but those pen tool plugins have often caused me a freeze up. I pretty much gave up using my 4D mouse as that sometimes will freeze the system...I suspect I have some other conflict going on in addition to the initial install problems but I can't figure it out so just tolerate the Wacom problems for now. I have gotten the latest drivers and even Stu helped me back and forth in email with the Wacom settings...this helped with my having less incidences of freezing but I still have at least a once a week load-in freeze problem.

kiwi

Hey thanks for coming over Rose,and thanks also for replying Erik


Rose Erik is a wizz with Windows maybe he might be able to help us get rid of the Wacom blues for you also


Stu.

Bacardi

I am not familiar with Win95 but I guess it must have at least as many problems with the system's resources than 98.

System's resources are indeed very limited and installing more memory won't help. The only thing that helps is to let Win start up with as little extra stuff as necessary.

A virus scanner, a crash guard, perhaps some audio software, a "smart" panel from a scanner,...when this becomes too much you get freezes.

Normally, when you install, you should de-activate everything with Ctrl+Alt+Del except for systray and explorer. Or reboot in Safe Mode

In Win 98 you can install a resource controller -the word may not be correct as my Win is a Flemish one- which places itself when clicked on the taskbar. Right-clicking gives you an option to see the data in %. You have System's Resources, User's Resources and Graphic Design Interface resources.
On the taskbar they are green when everything is OK, and red when the situation gets critical. When it gets red, you should de-activate soft in the Start-up panel (Start>Execute>MSCONFIG, the rightmost tab. But be careful not to de-activate the necessary stuff.

rosebytes

Yes Erik just as many problems with system resources and many things you install have the nerve to auto place themselves in startup and I have to take them out.
To check system resources I go to help and type in system resources and then click to display it. It is 90 percent free and I only have 4 things in startup...adobe gamma loader exe, scanner utilities, and 2 different things that say Power Reg Scheduler in them. I don't know what these power reg things are but they sound imp to me and I leave them alone.

ToXin

I'm thinking along those lines myself, now that it had been brought up... my system resources is only 52% free. [stuned]
The thing is, as Rose indicated, I don't know what all these things are (am investigating) so I have no idea which have added themselves that are not really necessary. I've just had a mess with turning off some that I can recognise and got the system resources up to 70% free but I am uneasy about dabbling with this stuff [confused] My PC is a couple of years old so there's a lot of stuff on it now.

To Erik - I've found PowerTools and AdAware so I'll get my download started [righton]

To Rose - personally I don't have any crashes using the 4D mouse, only with the pen... I'm starting to think that it may be the number of input signals from the pen ( lots of fast touches on the tablet ? )

kiwi

Because the pen tip clicks when it hits the tablet surface I dont think repetitve strikes on the surface would make much diff ToXin ,you can however check it in your Wacom control panel under double click in the options window which pops up when you select your pen and from there try different gaps between clicks and see if it makes it any better


It sounds more to me like your system is being starved somewhere as tablet only probs usually centre around erratic pen movement,sliders sticking to pen etc,things like that.


Stu.

rosebytes

My severe initial mouse problems were due to Win 95 and having to have a serial tab...would have been nice if Wacom put the additional readme files on their site or on a paper in the box with it instead of my having to access them later on the cd to see what went wrong.

After that I was making the mistake of leaving the mouse on the tablet when it was not in use and you are not supposed to. Also the mouse seems more sensitive to close proximity to the monitor than the pen does...something about screen resolution and refresh rate stuff. Wacom says keep the tablet at least 12 inches away. If I had to do it again I would have gotten a smaller size tablet.

Stu if you are reading this I finally got my pen tools working better (some of them were conflicting with my matrox millenium graphics card). Anyway I am looking for info or suggestions on how to use them...I didn't find anything on Wacom's site or in the online manual about them.

kiwi

Rose the pen tools are cool


Metal leafer is for applying gold leaf and silver to objects,it does this very well.


There is a distort filter as well hich I felt gave me as much if not more control then the liquify filter.


There are wood and stone filters with which you can scale and paint rocks as you go.



The airbrush will let you do things like make patterns and spray them I think....it was something like that


Cant remember if there are any others,but I used to use them quite a bit


Stu.