I checked through the forums to try and find the answer to this, but its difficult to search for an answer to an unknown problem. I'm going to try and explain the best I can and include an Image or two, thats messed up due to unknown problems. ok in this picture the blue and yellow lines appear randomly and I thought it was an issue with video card so I downloaded new drivers, but problem presists, some days I can do 5-10 images with no problems, and other days like today it happens every few minutes. Its very annoying if anyone has had this problem please tell me how to fix it. photoshop cs 8, I have checked adobes site for updates but I cant find any.

this is the image i'm working on today, the lines appear randomly while switching layers.

I've only seen this or something like this once before and that was due to some spotty beta video drivers. If you have the latest 'stable' release of the video driver and this still happens then try turning down the hardware accelleration of the video card. I'm poking at straws but I've seen some problems fixed this way. Control Panel->Display Settings; Go to the Settings tab; Click on the Advanced button; Click on the Troubleshoot tab on the dialog that pops ip; There is a slider on that tab that should have the indicator at Full. Maybe drop it down a step.

Yeah, I'm completely shooting in the dark here myself, but when was the last time you defragged your hard drive? Glitches happen. Is your hard drive over 75% capacity? Same thing (which makes me wonder why this is a serious problem and the manufacturers don't just labels their drives to the 75% capacity in the first place...?). This is a particular problem for video editing, but can produce some headaches for graphics packages like PS and Painter. As far as the video card, how old is your computer? Meaning, if you've got a Mac G4 or a Pentium3 and you put in a Wildcat card it might not be able to handle it - new drivers or not. This could be a redraw issue for incompatible hardware. How old is your computer in general (or for that matter, specifically, your hard drive - getting old is not good) - does it meet the "minimum" specs required by PS (say, G3 or Pentium3, w/128MB RAM), or does it meet the "reccommended" specs (G5, Pentium4, or Athlon, w/512MB RAM)? Makes a big difference. Maybe drop in a list of whatcha got, and how long this problem has been going on. "It's doing this" can be a VERY vague question for computers. -Lew ;-)

That sounds like god advice Jason. Especially if it doesn't appear when you print it.

my computer is very good, amd athalon 2700, 1gig pc 2700, nvidia fx 6600, and i have found that defragging is a waste my valuable time. 4 hours of file moving, and end up with slower computer, but for the sake of argument i will try it. i have also got my xp pro comp down to 19 startup process would be 15 but there are 2 from 3ds max and 2 from final render and some other hardware clamp for another application.

hmm i wonder if any of the hardware clamps have anything to do with it. ? hmm food for thought.

Do you have you Open GL enabled? I have an old relic NVIDIA Gforce and never experienced this.

Is you Scratch Disk set to the max?

Does this happen with all applications, or just some and not others?

You might leave a link with your old friends over in the Rhino Forum, maybe one of them have seen this recently?

Have you run the NVIDIA Diagnostics on your board and screen?

Do you have a spare monitor? Try switching monitors and see if you can get it to repeat this fault.

scratch disk is like 3gigs, i think opengl is on, and only in photoshop no other programs have problems, monitor switch not an option i have 17 lcd with dvi, no crt's with dvi here. :)

(scratches head, frowns, "hmmmmm...") I realize this is suggesting a headache, but have you tried putting the old video card (just guessing the 6600 is new to the system - hence your checking the drivers) back in and running Photoshop? The flip side would be (yes, another headache) uninstalling and reinstalling Photoshop.

Hmm... only in Photoshop.

I was speaking of the system scratch disk Jason. I'd check that one next.

Also, when the problem appears, does it do it when you open, after performing a certain task???

Have you installed any Photoshop Plug-Ins.

Update your virus definitions and run it to see if there is an infection.

my g drive is the scratch disk and it has about 75gigs of free spaceon the drive its a seagate 80gig drive 7200rpm and I have givin PS like 700+mb of memory as well. and like i have stated its random. i used PS for the past 3 days with no problems at all.

Jason, you need a scratch disk for Windows. This is the scratch disk I am referring to. I understand that many Adobe products allow for the option to have a separate scratch disk either on a physical or logical drive. I am not referring to those. I am referring to your Windows System scratch disk.

If you are assigning a Windows scratch disk on a drive letter that is different from the drive that Windows resides on, you do so at your own peril.

scratch disk for windows is on the c drive and is set to roughly 2048mb double the size of memory I have. also I dont get virii on that computer, and all the plugins have been there for long time, alien skin (eyecandy 4, ec3, xenofex 1 and 2) and flaming pear suite. and Kai's tools. we will figure this out eventually.