Re: CS2 causing issues/crashing?
Easy way: Re-install CS2. But I like to do a nice full cleaning when things go awry, and then make a clone on a second internal HD or an external HD. Gotta love a backup!
I don't know of a known issue with Photoshop, but if you bought a PC with all kinds of crap installed, I would use Add/Remove in Control Panel to remove what you can, then you could try to run a couple programs I realy like:
RegSeeker, which cleans out the registry of all old stuff that may be causing crashed or other problems.
CleanUp!, which removes all temporary files in the system you may not know you even had (from installs, etc.) and also prefetch files.
Also, I use ZoneAlarm for my firewall. It not only warns of incoming traffic, but also outgoing traffic (like a program trying to "phone home"), and gives you the opportunity to let through or stop what you want.
Every time a Windows machine starts having problems, I install these three in addition to free adware/spyware programs.
After that, if Photoshop is still messing up, re-install it, and when everything is working fine, if you have a second internal HD, start up from BootIt NG and easily copy and paste to make a clone of the machine. Warning: I just use the second internal drive to store my clone, and then if something happens to the initial install (first drive) I delete the initial install on the first drive, copy the clone from second hard drive, and paste it on the first hard drive (easy stuff and fast or faster than any other restore method).
I only boot up the second hard drive ONLY if the first hard drive dies, because if I boot it up it wants me to activate Windows again, and I'm not activating the same Windows on two different hard drives for fear that the other one won't work after that - and we can thank Microsoft's Windows Genuine (dis)Advantage for this, it started with XP. If you've got Windows 2000 you can boot from multiple copies of the same operating system and not have to activate - no activation issues at all, so can always have a backup in the state you want it if trouble arises again in the future.
Don