Working around the "broken thumbnail" problem for
raw files

Many people have experienced the “broken thumbnail” problem, in which the PSE 6
Organizer shows the broken-thumbnail icon for many or most of their raw files.
Sometimes the Organizer never succeeds in generating the raw-file thumbnails;
sometimes the broken icons appear after minutes or hours of use; and sometimes
the Organizer crashes or stops responding. Regenerating the thumbnails can fix
the problem temporarily, but the broken icons usually come back soon.

This problem appears to be caused by using a machine with multiple processors,
typically a newer machine with a hyper-threaded or multi-core CPU. Though most
new computers have multiple processors, it seems Adobe never tested raw files on
them.

You can work around this problem by restricting the PSE 6 Organizer to run on a
single processor. You can verify that your machine has multiple processors by
looking at the Task Manager’s Performance tab.

To work around the problem, follow the steps below to create a shortcut on your
desktop for starting the PSE Organizer. Always start the Organizer using this
shortcut, not the original Adobe welcome screen or the Editor. You can place
this shortcut on the Start menu if you’d like.

To create the shortcut on Vista:

1. On your desktop, right-click and select New > Shortcut.

2. In the field “Type the location”, copy and paste the following text:

  C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start /affinity 1 "" "C:\Program
Files\Adobe\Photoshop
  Elements 6.0\PhotoshopElementsOrganizer.exe"

3. Click Next, and for the name of the shortcut, enter:

  PSE 6 Organizer (1 processor)

4. To regenerate the thumbnails, start the Organizer, Edit > Select All, Edit
> Update Thumbnail.

To create the shortcut on XP:

1. Download the PsTools.zip package from:

 <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx>

2. Make a folder c:\program files\sysinternals and copy psexec.exe from
PsTools.zip into that folder.

3. On your desktop, right-click and select New > Shortcut.

4. In the field “Type the location”, copy and paste the following text:

  "C:\Program Files\sysinternals\psexec.exe" -a 0 -d "c:\Program
Files\Adobe\Photoshop
  Elements 6.0\PhotoshopElementsOrganizer.exe"

5. Click Next, and for the name of the shortcut, enter:

  PSE 6 Organizer (1 processor)

6. To regenerate the thumbnails, start the Organizer, Edit > Select All, Edit
> Update Thumbnail.

Note that the XP solution hasn’t yet been tested very well. (If you try it on
XP, please report your experience.)

By restricting the Organizer to one processor, you will be slowing it down some,
but much less than a factor of 2 (if you have a 2-processor system) – this is
because the Organizer can rarely use 100% of all the processors simultaneously.

See this thread for gory details:

Thanks John,

Can you confirm if this shortcut is correct for XP -

"C:\Program Files\sysinternals\psexec.exe" -a 0 -d "c:\Program
Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 6.0\PhotoshopElementsOrganizer.exe"

or should it be

"C:\Program Files\sysinternals\psexec.exe" -a 1 -d "c:\Program
Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 6.0\PhotoshopElementsOrganizer.exe"

I have tried to use this shortcut but still seem to be using 2 processors by
looking at task manager. I read somewhere on here (but can't find it now) that
the shorcut should contain a 1 and not 0.

In another post, I wrote that the documentation for "psexec" seems
inconsistent with the actual behavior of the program. Try both 1 and 0.

When you set the processor affinity of PhotoshopElementsOrganizer.exe, you
should see the assigned processor consuming a much larger percentage of CPU,
though the other one could still have a percentage larger than 0%, depending on
what else is going on your machine.

One other person has reported that the shortcut worked for him. If neither 0 nor
1 works for you, try this:

- Start the Organizer.

- In the Task Manager on the Processes tab, right-click
PhotoshopElementsOrganizer.exe and Set Affinity.

Thanks John - it seems either way works, using 0 or 1 or the Set Affinity. I
guess I had something else running before.