Dreamweaver CS3 crashes and won’t start up again
Hey kids, this is definitely one of the weirdest bugs I have ever clapped eyes on.
Not for the first time, I was happily authoring CSS and Dreamweaver CS3 crashed. Turns out, it doesn’t have to be specifically CSS, but that was my situation anyway.
The crash
Something feels a little too familiar: this is DW after all, and those of us who have used it from the start will know the pedigree. But I try to restart the program anyway: it’s 1am and I don’t need this. Nope, fail. There it is, unequivocal and painfully blunt: Dreamweaver CS3 won’t start on Windows XP.
The following options were available:
- Abuse someone at Adobe
- Reinstall Dreamweaver
- Try to clean out my config files so that Dreamweaver has to create new ones on restart (an old and occasionally successful solution)
And the answer? None of the above.
Here we are with this veritable portent of disaster: in these times of quad processors and 32-bit colour, has the long-exorcised ghost of DW’s buggy past returned to haunt us?
Sort of, but the fix turned out to be simple, if somewhat obscure. I shall elaborate in a moment, but first I must attribute my source. In August 2007, Adobe Community Expert and author David Powers solved this profoundly ugly problem in the Macromedia.Dreamweaver Google Group.
Not a byte more, not a byte less
Apparently, an install of Dreamweaver CS3 (mine is currently v9.0 Build 3481) crashes if you edit a file to exactly a multiple of 8,192 bytes. Not a byte more, not a byte less. The chances of this happening are probably fairly small, to edit a file to the exact size and at the same moment DW does some processing stuff and doesn’t like what you’re giving it.
Don’t believe me? I wouldn’t have either in your position. But the process is: I’m editing a CSS file, I try to change a pixel value and suddenly it’s all gone. As I said, it doesn’t have to be CSS, either. It could be a document of any type you can edit in DW. So I checked out David’s comment above and, lo and behold:
So now what?
If you have this bug, from here it’s quick and easy to work around. Don’t bother trying to do anything with Dreamweaver CS3 because as long as your file is a multiple of 8,192 bytes, you ain’t going nowhere.
1. If you were working within a Site, test if this bug did cause the crash
So if you were editing your file in a Site you had previously defined in Dreamweaver CS3, it’s possible to test whether this bug was the cause of the crash. Otherwise, you can skip to 2.
In Windows Explorer, I temporarily renamed the folder that contained my site so that now Dreamweaver CS3 started successfully and with perfect nonchalance, asking me to Manage Sites… because of course it can no longer find my site folder.
Rather than point Manage Sites… to the new folder name and have it crash again, I closed Dreamweaver CS3 for the moment. Now I had seen DW start properly, I could be fairly certain I had this bug. So if DW doesn’t start after renaming your site folder in Windows Explorer, then you have some other problem and I’m sorry your visit here didn’t help.
2. Edit the problem file outside of Dreamweaver CS3
Next, I increased (you could also decrease, but if you plan to work on your file again soon you risk repeating the bug) the size of the CSS file using Notepad. That’s right, I simply added some whitespace and saved it. Same goes for any other file type.
Once I was sure my CSS file was no longer 8,192 bytes, I renamed the folder back to its original name in Windows Explorer. I restarted Dreamweaver CS3 once more and I was back in action! If you’ve come this far, I hope you are too.
Afterthought
As you can probably see, there are quite a few satisfied customers in the Responses below, from Denmark to Chile. So why not let me know if you had this problem too and if your situation was a little different, please add to the knowledge.
And finally, this incident jogged my memory of another oddball software behaviour I encountered once in the early days of Office 2007 for Windows, because it too was about processing bytes and coming out with the wrong result. Check out this anomaly with Excel 2007: if you multiply 850 by 77.1 you get 100,000. The real answer? 65,535 of course, a juicy, meaningful number for aficionados of binary computing! [15 April 2008: I tested this again recently and it appears to have been patched - Mike]
April 7th, 2008 at 10:01
cheers Mike – worked a treat!
April 14th, 2008 at 23:36
All the resources on the internet, and I find this solution on page 3 of Google search results. This problem didn’t present so much of an inconvenience in CS2 because I was still using notepad interchangeably and must have fixed it without realizing it by using notepad. Now I’ve moved up to CS3 and am far more dependent on DW and couldn’t find my way past the constant crash. Thanks a million for posting this issue!
April 15th, 2008 at 11:23
[...] jeg faldt over dette indlæg på Mike Padgett’s blog. Løsningen var såre simpel. Dreamweaver CS3 har tilsyneladende en bug, der gør at den ikke kan [...]
April 15th, 2008 at 19:11
Thanks for your help. All of a sudden Dreamweaver CS3 just crashed and would not re-open. The intro screen would flash and then nothing would happen. I tried a restart to the computer to no avail. A quick Google search (man I love Google) and I was able to find several references, but most required an uninstall, wiping the registry, etc. I no longer have easy access to the install CD, being part of the corporate machine, so that was not an option. After reading this article, I found that my CSS file was exactly 8,192 bytes. I edited it with notepad, and voila…. Dreamweaver opened just fine.
Very weird bug.
April 15th, 2008 at 19:25
No worries, Chris, I’m happy that this has been helpful to you!
The credit really goes to David Powers as mentioned in the article, who figured this one out some time ago. As I have done in the past with obscure issues, I just wanted to add another voice out there because it took me so long myself to find a fix for this.
No patch yet from Adobe as far as I can see. Let’s hope they sort it. Meantime, if anyone can tell us if this issue occurs in DW8 or even earlier, or when editing other formats than CSS please let us know!
April 16th, 2008 at 15:58
OHMIGOD! That is possible the most ridiculous bug. This is the second time CS3 has bugged out on me, first time the licensing stopped working.
Thanks a million for this solution, was beginning to have feelings of doom about how bad this bug might be, phew.
April 25th, 2008 at 19:28
I am so glad I found your solution. I was just about to start uninstalling and reinstalling and who knows what else.
This probably saved me at least 4 hours of troubleshooting.
Thank you for posting this fix – what a weird bug.
Doug
April 30th, 2008 at 4:09
Amazing! I thought I had tried everything and this really saved the day. Thanks for the post.
May 4th, 2008 at 7:29
Mike,
I just wanted to say thanks for figuring this out first. I was really [word removed] because I’m on a super tight deadline and right when I’m almost completed with my work Dreamweaver decides to go “Capooy”! So I was like what the heck is going on here, and I’m actually on vista (unfortunately, we don’t work on apples at work) and I was like this must be another vista problem, great what do I do now! So I was just trying to do some basic trouble shooting and I realized that I could start because the caching in Dreamweaver would always stop half way through and I get the famous, this application has experienced and error yada yada…etc etc.
So I finally got DW started and I was like “is it my PHP code, did I do something wrong”. I hovered over the css file and “BAM!” that’s when DW stopped running. I spent all this time trying to figure this out and repaired my installation of DW…. all I had to do is search on google for CSS problem with crashing DW and there was my answer…I hate you. JK.
Anyways thanks for giving me a little light on this situation. I’m going to have to tell my colleagues at work to make sure you keep your CSS at a 8kb minimum, WTF is that adobe. Please fix this!
Thanks,
Brad
May 8th, 2008 at 13:17
Thank you so much. Mixed emotions here. From being fuming mad and getting ready to reinstall dreamweaver, to thrilled about such a simple fix, to angry for such a stupid bug, to amazement at how crazy this is!
Thanks SO much. Ever so grateful.
May 15th, 2008 at 17:56
Thanks Mike,
I took the trouble of reinstalling and then again going through google (may be firs time my wordings was not proper!) After browsing through a couple of pages I landed here! Yes my CSS file which I was just modifiying reached the magic mark of 8192! just some blank lines and a cooment line at bottom and saved the file. DW is back after giving me 24 hrs of headache! I have no words to praise you for this post! Keep up the good work of spreading the solutions even though they may available at some other forums, more the better! Thanks once again.
May 23rd, 2008 at 17:18
I had this problem a year or so ago, and resolved it with a series of steps that took some hours and at the time, was I mad … I am at a remote location and my notes weren’t here (turned out that was a good thing) … here comes the problem again … I searched for the solution and found THIS. I realized I had been working on css at the time so I thought, hmmm … first I checked the size of the file, and it was not exactly 8,192 bytes but I tried by using the steps anyway … and it WORKED. Back up and running in less than 5 minutes…. thank you, thank you, to you, David Powers et al. This is a bizarre bug.
May 24th, 2008 at 0:10
Yes, we have encountered this bug on a variety of sites.. Even worse, it happens on MULTIPLES of 8192 bytes. One site we had, the file was 16383 bytes (not 16384, though, which is weird), and it was crashing in the exact same manner.
Really weird that it still crashes even when one byte off, though.
Pretty harsh bug. Basically, Dreamweaver crashes if the filesize of your CSS file is within one byte of a multiple of 8192.
June 2nd, 2008 at 22:24
perfect, i was 1 dice roll away from total reformat of a pc that did not need a format that was 2.5 years old, saved me a lot of hassle, I tried a lot of things before searching for this solution. Yeee all de man!
June 6th, 2008 at 13:28
Incredible ! Only thing is – my .css file was 4.20KB’s and in the properties window said that size on disk is 8.192KB … Amazingly stupid bug … Thanks for this solution and inspired blog post .. ;)
June 7th, 2008 at 19:20
Thanks a lot, saved me a couple of hours!
> Even worse, it happens on MULTIPLES of 8192 bytes.
Absolutely true, DW crashed on my 24575 bytes CSS.
June 10th, 2008 at 3:44
What a lifesaver . . . thank you and thanks for those who mentioned the bug affecting multiples.
I can’t imagine the odds of this but I made an edit that sized my PHP file to 24,576 AND the linked style sheet to 16,384. I feel like I should have won something by hitting those odds but the fix in this post is enough of a prize for me. Thanks again.
June 10th, 2008 at 4:07
As an addendum to my prior comment, I encourage people who encounter this to report it to Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
June 16th, 2008 at 8:51
Holy **** you are the man… What a load of bull****… I almost had to go Office Space on my PC…
June 18th, 2008 at 8:25
I just experienced this problem and did a quick google search and glad to have found your site. Thanks for putting this up.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:32
Crazy ****, thx for the solution Mike, you saved my day man! It really crashes on multiples of 8192, my file was 16.384 Bytes… so strange!
June 21st, 2008 at 15:47
Hi Mike and all,
Ok, Im having this problem but the thing here is I wasnt working on any CSS files. I was working on a html file, it got stuck, crashed and refused to start up now :( I tried uninstalling and re-installing, removing the config files and repairing and also changing the location of my site folder, renaming, but nothing works. Ive gone thru all the CSS files in the DW flder but nothing shows 8192kb…any idea what else I can do to get this prog to start, Thanks
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:43
If this bug is causing Dreamweaver CS3 to crash, the source of the problem will definitely be in the last file you were working on (your HTML file). The file format is not important.
Comments from this thread suggest that the bug causes a crash if the size of the file is 8,192 bytes, or multiples of that (so 4096, 16,384, 24,575, 32,768 … etc).
Hope this helps. If it doesn’t, you have a different issue.
June 22nd, 2008 at 19:44
Increible, agregue un par de lineas para alterar el tamaño del ultimo archivo css en que trabaje y listo, cargo de nuevo el DW.
Muchisimas gracias, ya habia tratado todo y estaba a punto de formatear el disco y reinstalar Vista.
Gracias!
June 28th, 2008 at 23:34
Incredible I got a css file that is 8.192KB … what a !#%* bug … Thanks for this solution and great post ;) Heel erg bedankt.
July 1st, 2008 at 0:49
Big thanks from me too, it’s 23:36 and I’ve got a website to deliver tomorrow. Would you believe it my CSS file hit 8192bytes and nothing worked! Thanks for the tip you’re a lifesaver!
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:28
Happened to me too..thank god for this blog post. It’s been a long day getting up to speed with Vista and I thought this was another Vista bug.
July 4th, 2008 at 0:06
you rock man!!!!! Saved our butts here. Thanks a million!!
July 4th, 2008 at 2:44
[...] respecto a esta tallita de Adobe, encontrarán dos artículos a los que hago referencia. Uno en inglés, bastante extenso y otro en español más [...]
July 10th, 2008 at 19:17
Wow! This is incredible. I was workin on a CSS when the same thing happened to me. I reinstalled Dreamweaver and the problem persisted. Then I read your article. Sure enough, I checked the size of the file and it was 8 192 bytes. Thank you for the solution!
July 11th, 2008 at 9:42
Incredible.
I just had exactly the same problem.
Thankyou so much for this invaluable information.
The curious thing is, the CSS file I was editing was created by Dreamweaver 9 itself one of the Spry applications.
How about that for a paradox / oxymoron.
July 14th, 2008 at 6:03
I also had this problem. This is pretty funny and sad for the engineer who wrote that portion of the code.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:31
I can’t believe it either, thank you, thank you and another than you for this fix, I was just about to reinstall and everything!!!!!
Saved so much time
July 17th, 2008 at 17:44
Wow! This is an unbelievable error…
too bad i reinstalled dreamweaver and it took an hour…
thanks!
July 18th, 2008 at 8:49
Wow, this just happened to me and I was dreading what I needed to do to make Dreamweaver work again when I found your post. Thanks for the miraculous fix. I would have never figured that out on my own. You saved me tons of work I would have had to go through to try to fix this problem.
July 26th, 2008 at 0:05
OMG… this just happened to me too! I thought at first it was a problem with DW, but re-installing it didn’t work. After another half hour or so of trouble shooting I came across this post, and WOOT, it’s fixed.
Thanks a million!
July 28th, 2008 at 8:20
Same problem, same file. Thanks for your time saving post.
July 30th, 2008 at 17:47
Man, this post saved me a LOT of time!
Thank you
August 5th, 2008 at 11:41
Unbelievable but true!!!!
Thanks for the tip.
August 8th, 2008 at 17:58
Well Wow,
I could just tear out my hair as to the aggravation this issue caused me, uh.
I am very thankful to find this article, and to those that found it first.
I really hope that Adobe will find a fix to the issue and give us all a patch to it, but at least if it comes up again I know what to do.
August 15th, 2008 at 7:17
Thank You Mike – bug exactly as you explained – you saved my ass – your fix was simple and it worked a charm for me – fantastic job you done.
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:26
Oh my God! I can’t believe it, but it worked. I spent two hours reinstalling the software and nothing happened until I decided to google it and found this site. Thank you, it’s a great help.
August 30th, 2008 at 21:10
What a joke Adobe.
Thanks for the post!
September 1st, 2008 at 19:03
Wow! Thanks. You’re article just save me a few hours of work. Thanks for keeping the article available.
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:36
Incredibly, I was bitten by this nasty bug, but my first Google seach found this page. Truly weird, but thanks, Mike, for this bizarre and miraculous finding. It saved my day!
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:15
I too have just found this bug today and couldn’t work out what was going on.
Thanks to this post I’ve managed to get back to work again.
September 4th, 2008 at 14:04
Just happened to me – wondered what the hell was going on but remembered reading something like this before and found this site. Sure enough the above is true and I was up and running again in no time – nice one
September 5th, 2008 at 6:26
We can add files that equal exactly 16,383 bytes to that “Not a byte more, not a byte less” bug list.
Thanks so much for the clues that led me to fix my Dreamweaver issues; awesome!! :-D
Tim
September 5th, 2008 at 23:38
You saved me a lot of heartache. I Googled my issue and within 10 minutes I had your fix. I have always been a David Powers fan and that accolade has not diminished. Interestingly, my css file was a multiple of your base figure!
September 7th, 2008 at 3:37
Apparently this also works for multiples of 8,192 bytes. I was editing the size of some padding when my file hit 16,384 bytes and it crashed.
September 8th, 2008 at 20:07
Well done Mike for posting this! Had the exact problem you had… I was actually busy editing a CSS file when I had the crash. CSS file was 40,960 bytes. Fortunately I did not have to re-install or delete anything.
September 11th, 2008 at 2:09
omigod. unbelievable is the word. i spent hours uninstalling, reinstalling, googling and pulling hair. thanks a million! (actually, thanks 8,193 times!)
September 15th, 2008 at 13:37
My problem is I have heaps and heaps of files that are that file size including html. Why is this? It is a new program and I havent created anything Not just a .css style sheet. Am i supposed to delete them all? Most say file size (for example) size 7.64kb but size on disk 8,129kb. any help with this is greatly appreciated
Kyle
Australia
September 15th, 2008 at 13:51
Curious that you should have so many files at exactly that size! Well, if you want to continue to use Dreamweaver CS3, I suggest that you do a batch Find and Replace and just add some whitespace to them outside of the Dreamweaver environment. There are lots of tools out there that can help you to do that.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:23
I hate bugs! Thanks for the “raid”. I was smart enough to search for this before reinstall and install the evil loop of trying to fix something. The file size is a mmmmmm, very suspicious, and a CSS to boot in CS3.
September 16th, 2008 at 14:47
yes very frustrating. Will look for one. thanks mike!
September 19th, 2008 at 3:05
Wow, this is a super odd error in Dreamweaver. This would have been the last thing I would even think about, if at all. Thanks a lot for this post, it worked wonders! :)
September 21st, 2008 at 5:10
OMFG… thanks for the gint. Dreamweaver is running fine know.
btw, I’m from Chile xD
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:39
You have to change your header “Not a byte more, not a byte less” because css file size of a 40 956 bytes (40 960 would be a multible of 8192) would also make dreamweaver to crash. I used notepad and added some whitespace and everything is fine again.
If you have this kind of crash problem first try to rename your site folder name. If dreamweaver will start properly you know you have this file size problem. Add some whitespace to every file (css, htm, php,…) and try opening dreamweaver. It should do the trick.
September 23rd, 2008 at 21:48
Thanks for posting this, Mike. My css file size was 39.9k. Edited in gasp Frontpage and saved it and that did the trick. You saved me a lot of hassle having to find the cs3 suite and re-installation.
September 24th, 2008 at 23:32
Hi, just had this problem, Thanks for posting this. I have the feeling you just saved me a good few hours. Nice one!
September 26th, 2008 at 4:09
THANKS Mike! I never would have thought of this. I couldn’t even remove Dreamweaver to re-install it, it was a pretty hopeless situation. Your explanation and fix worked to perfection, and I too was on a tight deadline. I have to admit though, I actually got a good laugh when I checked my CSS file size and it was exactly 8,129kb. Thanks again!
September 26th, 2008 at 9:31
This is amazing.
It sounds like Adobe is aware of the problem??????
It seems like this has been around for awhile at this point, since CS4 is due out in about a month.
They have no fix on this as of 09-25-08??
Thanks for pointing this out, can’t wait to tell people about this in my class that I am taking right now. Someone else was complaining about not being able to start up DW.
You have saved me a ton of time, though it still cost me 3 hours or so.
September 27th, 2008 at 17:16
Excellent Fix, Thanks! I am currently using Dreamweaver CS3 on Microsoft Vista Ultimate. I was editing a css file when dw suddenly crashed. I tried starting dw again and it crashed multiple times.
My Fix: I opened my .css file into notepad, you can click anywhere after the } and tab your spacebar 3-4 times and save the css file. Re-open dw and behold, it works.
September 29th, 2008 at 23:35
Sure enough, your fix worked for CS3 on Vista 64-bit. My CSS file was exactly 8192kb. I added whitespace like you suggested and restarted DW. Started fine. THANK YOU!
Another problem I occasionally have is that “something” gets corrupted in a DW config file while I’m trying to upload, usually a CSS file, and DW crashes. The fix I’ve used for that is to go into the DW system config folder and delete the WinFileCache-(random number).dat file. On Vista this is in the Roaming folder. I created a desktop shortcut to the folder because I find that I do have to delete that file on a regular basis. (or type %AppData%)
October 1st, 2008 at 16:51
Worked. Unreal.
Important to note it seems to be related only to .css files. I found various other “8,192 size on disk” files in my site. But when I changed the most recent 8,192 .css file I had been editing–poof. Magic. Crazy day.
Thanks for the fix. I was almost ready to run the whole uninstall script (CS3Clean.exe). Not a good choice; as this would have removed the entire CS3 suite and deleted various registry entries. Whew.
October 1st, 2008 at 18:20
That is it! I was getting ready to reinstal/update my CS3 package, but then decided to do a quick search on DW CS3 not starting up and this was the first thing I found. I was updating a CSS file last night when it just shut down.
Great article, Thanks So Much.
October 1st, 2008 at 22:59
This is probably not at all related, but maybe? A few days ago I was working in Dreamweaver and photoshop going back and forth.Sizing images, saving, putting to a page in Dreamweaver. Suddenly the CSS was all gone! Don’t know how it happened, but it had vanished. I move pretty quick from photoshop to Dreamweaver and figured somehow I must have deleted something I shouldn’t have. I got the CSS file back from the server, all better. But today I was working in Dreamweaver CS3, same as before and when I switched to add a photo to a different page the CSS for that page wasn’t there! But the file was still in Dreamweaver this time. Only the page I had been working on prior had CSS applied to it. I freaked and closed Dreamweaver and Photoshop. I opened Dreamweaver back up and it was ok again. Any thoughts? My site is now over 100 pages. I have a TON of images, not in any folders, just listed. (didn’t know much about folders 6 months ago when I started) I read somewhere a long time ago that Dreamweaver “stops working” when the site gets to be over 100pages. I laughed. NOT laughing now! any thoughts. Adobe’s never any help.
Thanks!
The site is http://www.isuckatgolf.net
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:54
Hi Ken,
Dreamweaver used to be terribly buggy and notoriously unreliable. Back in the days of UltraDev, it used to crash regularly and exhibit other unusual behaviours. It has improved a lot in recent years, but you still find that “real” programmers despise it.
I’ve stuck with Dreamweaver through force of habit, I suppose, though I’ve had periods of using Visual Studio, PrimalScript and of course Notepad.
Assuming you’re using Windows, what you saw with the screen appearing blank is probably one of a host of quirks that seem as much to do with the operating system as the software. I find that even Notepad appears to screw up sometimes with big files.
It might have to do with a lack of RAM (for it most often happens to me when using rubbish workstations), or maybe something else, but it’s usually fixed by a quick Minimize and Restore of the offending window. If that doesn’t sort it, I still wouldn’t worry too much – with a display bug, the file itself is not being affected and that’s what matters, after all.
Unless, however, you can isolate the circumstances and repeat the bug with some sort of regularity, you’ll just have to think of it as another irritation of a life lived surrounded by machines!
October 2nd, 2008 at 21:51
Ok i didn’t read all the comments here.. but holy crap that worked. I freaked out (as most of you did cause you’re in DW 24/7) … and i’m thinkin there is no way this is this gonna work.
Found the file, 24,576kb. Edited. Opened DW.
you’re a life saver, thanks.
October 2nd, 2008 at 21:51
OH — and yeah, mine WAS css also, if that helps.
October 2nd, 2008 at 22:35
Oh my God ! It worked … it worked !! You just saved me 2-3 hours of work. I might have just gone ahead and reinstalled Dreamweaver. I thought I did something wrong and that messed up Dw. I was looking into my code to see where I went wrong. Thank you so much Mike !! This article was so helpful.
October 3rd, 2008 at 23:24
I had this problem with CS2 on Windows i got so fed up with it that i solved the problem by moving to Mac and purchasing CS3. Everything was running smoothly until Dreamweaver decided not to launch any more. I found this page and thought my prayers were answered, I changed the folder name but the application still wouldn’t launch fully. When I checked for files of that size I didn’t have any..
I managed to get around the problem by ‘drag & dropping’ the file in to (currently not open) Dreamweaver on the dock, causing the application to launch. I obviously hadn’t tried this before and it is an easy solution because it causes Dreamweaver to load in a different way.. Poor show from Adobe!
October 4th, 2008 at 16:04
Just to remind readers that, though I think I made this clear enough already, this is a Windows-only bug. Thanks.
October 6th, 2008 at 17:24
Unreal – this was my problem exactly. I added some whitespace to my all.css file and that fixed it – thanks for publishing this!
Kurt
October 7th, 2008 at 3:41
Thanks Mike,
Just read your response. I think it was just one of those things too like you said. It takes the steam out of you a bit however when you see how quickly it can “all be gone” if you do something really stupid! Hey, here’s a long shot. Do you know of any way to not have to put the whole site when you add a new page to the spry menu tab? I just waited an hour for my site to put because that’s the only way I know how to do it when I add anything new to the menu tab. I tried just putting the spry tab, maintemplate and the new page itself but it didn’t work. thanks!
ken
October 7th, 2008 at 9:31
Hello again, Ken.
Short answer is that I have absolutely no idea, sir. I don’t use any of the Spry controls in Dreamweaver. Sorry about that.
October 8th, 2008 at 17:43
You have a great site, I have the dreamweaver crash. I tried your solutions (didn´t work but never mind), I have a massive CS3 crash, so far I´m getting no response from Adobe (except for asking me questions about stuff I already told them), I notice someone had a licensing problem and wondered how she resolved it?
October 8th, 2008 at 22:53
Hi Elaine,
Thanks for your comments. I wouldn’t hang around waiting for Adobe if I were you – they’re about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
Perhaps you could post your issue. I’m no expert of course, but I’ve been using DW since the dawn of time, so you never know. What’s important is what you were doing when the crash happened, what operating system you’re working on, what if any error messages there are, and what’s happening with it now.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:12
wow, like seriously? I could not believe it so I went into FTP and sure enough, 8,192…. wow how unbelievably ridiculous could that possibly be?
October 10th, 2008 at 17:50
Hi Mike,
Thanks for that, I´m going slightly mental trying to sort this one. I´ve been using CS3 for around 12 months, with only a few minor problems.
First problem is I´m running English software on a spanish “speaking” Windows Vista laptop. So although I can follow most paths sometimes its still a struggle to find the right named file when its something different.
Its some week ago now that this problem started, I was working in dreamweaver for several hours sucessfully, on trying to upload my nicely altered files to the server, I got the “crash”. Trouble is the whole of my CS3 suite is affected, photoshop, fireworks etc. (Web CS3 edition), only Acrobat works, Dreamweaver just won´t launch at, Photoshop teases me with a flash of a blank page before disappearing.
I thought it could be the license, so I downloaded a patch from Adobe, but it won´t install, (something to do with access permissions I think). So I tried to follow the manual instructions, but can´t find the specified file, so if anyone knows what %ALLUSERSPROFILE% is in Spanish that would be really useful! Still don´t know if that´s the problem though. I´ve trawled spanish posts, to see if I can find the same problem in Spanish but no luck.
I´ve uninstalled it and re-installed it 3 times to no avail.
Any ideas at all would be most welcome.
October 11th, 2008 at 1:01
Thank the universe for Mike Padgett! I was going absolutely bonkers on this one. I had three CSS files that were causing the problem: one was 8192 bytes, and the others were multiples!
ACK!
October 16th, 2008 at 2:59
When are they going to patch this ridiculous bug?
October 16th, 2008 at 4:41
Another happy customer! Thank you! And I am using DWCS3 9.0.3481, which I believe to be the latest version. Sigh.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:06
You sir, are a genius. I added a fluff comment to my CSS file and everything is working again.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:27
Unbelieveable. Similarly had a crash at 10pm on a Friday (it’s always at the best time!).
I have just found this thread, and was surprised to find the CSS file I was working wih was 8,195 bytes. I thought I would try this fix anyway, and despite the disbelief of my colleagues, it worked a treat.
Really saved hours of head scratching – thanks.
October 22nd, 2008 at 21:50
Incredible help. I was racking my brain trying to figure out why Dreamweaver CS3 on our computer kept crashing on startup. Low and behold I googled, came across this article, checked our style.css file in the project, and it was 8,192 bytes exactly. What are the odds!
Needless to say I edited the file outside of dreamweaver and it is now functional again.
I thank you. Our clients thank you.
Many thanks and God bless you.
October 23rd, 2008 at 23:48
Good lord I’m glad i found this via Google. After trying everything short of a re-install I was about to call Adobe on this, as it would happen at the exact time I was working on a rush project.
Here’s hoping Dreamweaver CS4 behaves better.
October 24th, 2008 at 15:28
thank you very much for such a simple solution. i couldn’t believe ti was that simple. lol I’m at work right now and had to do a lot of editing to a client web site when DW crashed and would not start. You just saved me hours of frustrated attempts to fix it and loose valuable time. YAY
October 26th, 2008 at 1:10
Yep!! This happen to me too yesterday. I could not figure what the heck happened. Who would ever think that a file size would cause this. I searched google for an answer, but no go until I read this post. Indeed we appreciate you sharing your solution with us. It worked for me, but the file was not a .css page it was a .tpl page!
MsKitti
October 27th, 2008 at 15:19
Hmm, so i’m having similar troubles right now, some files just add a couple of irrelevant comment lines or some such and they stop doing it, but I have a couple of persistant files which keep doing it, even though file size isn’t one of the magic numbers.
October 28th, 2008 at 17:07
Thanks for the post, It took me a while to remember what files I was working on yesterday when DW crashed. I didn’t need to run it again after it crashed so I didn’t try to re-start it until this morning when I got the crazy start screen flash then crash.
When I started looking for 8,192 files I had bunch throughout different sites, but then I remembered that I was working on a couple of CSS files both of which were 8,192 so I added some comment lines to the end of the files and I was back up and running.
I sooooo glad your post showed up as number 3 in google when I searched for ‘dreamweaver cs3 crashes on startup’.
FYI: this bug doesn’t appear to affect DW8 since I run it on another machine in the office and I could open and run DW with the same site defined.
November 3rd, 2008 at 0:17
Thank you sooooo very much.. I was ready to publish the site and then this happened…It was like a black hole….
This trick worked…I am so thankful for taking time to explain it…
November 3rd, 2008 at 19:09
Worked perfectly for me by using notepad to edit the CSS file. Thank goodness for me that you published this site! Thank you!!
November 4th, 2008 at 21:21
I’m imagining Adobe execs:
“Jolly good show! Look at what our customers will put up with! Look at how much they depend on us! They wouldn’t change products if we built CS5 out of sawdust and tinfoil and charged $5k/license! *throws full bottles of champagne out window of high-rise corner office*”
November 4th, 2008 at 22:25
Just happened to me too. In my case the file was 16,383 bytes according to Windows. Adding some carriage returns to the end of the file fixed it. I’m also on v9.0 Build 3481.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:59
Unbelievable! Just happened to me – did a repair and still nothing. Did a google search for “dreamweaver cs3 wont load” and lo and behold here you were. Thank you very much – up and running again.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:55
Wow I dont belive this. The exact same thing just happened to me, I found this page through google and wouldnt you know; 8,192 bytes. You just saved my day :)
Cheers!
November 7th, 2008 at 3:44
This is the most bizarre, unnecessary error. Of note is that I was unable to simply restore the folder name and relaunch. I had to completely delete the site profile within dreamweaver and re-create the site in site manager.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:47
Neglected to Thank You! Without your fix I would have wasted a significant amount of time troubleshooting, Thanks so much!
November 11th, 2008 at 0:23
You just saved my day big time – Thank you. As you, editing a CSS file, click save – crash. What-the… Reboot, no go. Googled, found this article and yes the CSS file was exactly 8,192 bytes. As per your instructions, added some white space in Notepad and Dreamweaver starts again. Thanks again.
November 12th, 2008 at 2:46
Why do we continue to support Dreamweaver? This bug is uncall for and so careless of them. This bug has caused so many frustrating hours waisted. I still have yet found which file crashed it.
I simply will just uninstall it and find another software to use.
November 12th, 2008 at 10:24
#102, Andy:
I totally understand your frustration and I remember having similar feelings – particularly because it happened a couple of times before I figured it out. I would also agree with your implication that there are lots of good IDEs out there and in the interests of supporting development out there, everyone should try a few.
It’s force of habit that keeps a lot of folks coming back to Dreamweaver, as does its integration with the Adobe Creative Suite (I don’t personally use the majority of titles in the suite, the major exception being Fireworks).
And despite its occasional bugginess, which has decreased significantly through the cycle of releases, I like to use Dreamweaver simply because it’s better the devil you know “after all these years”. My moans about Adobe are therefore generally confined to matters of licensing.
For example, getting Creative Suite to work in Linux / WINE is painfully difficult even though you have a perfectly legal licence to use it. If you do succeed (using the Win98 setting), performance is often horribly impaired.
Aside from that however, I have to admit with some reservations that most of my grumbles tend to originate from the same source as my positive feelings about Dreamweaver. For me it comes down to the fact that I believe that, for experienced developers anyway, Dreamweaver has not significantly changed in years.
How this works both ways is that, on the one hand, I don’t appreciate the successive bundles of bugfixes and cosmetic upgrades being packaged and sold as “new versions”. On the other hand, however, it can be seen as a huge positive, since the product shows itself to be basically sound: if it ain’t broke and all that.
Thanks for your comment and I really hope you managed to find the source of your problem. And if you did uninstall Dreamweaver, I’d like very much to hear about your experiments with other software, since I’m trying out a lot of new tools myself at the moment.
November 13th, 2008 at 13:54
GREAT!!!!
It solves my big problem
November 14th, 2008 at 14:23
Big Thanks for this article – I’ve been using Dreamweaver for years and this is the second time I’ve encountered this 8,192 bytes bug. The last time was so long ago, I’d obviously (with it being such a bizzare bug) forgotten how to fix it, so thanks again for this useful advice.
November 17th, 2008 at 16:54
This is really unbelievable. I just had a similar issue, and removing a folder and adding files back in one by one finally found me the offending file. It WAS a css-file, but its file size was 2.22kB, which is nowhere near the 8k sizes. In my case, it seems as though some invalid css broke DW because I pressed CTRL+S in the middle of a declaration. So if you have a similar issue, check your css for validity!
And thanks a million for your post. I was about to reinstall but decided to search first. Boy, am I glad I did!
November 19th, 2008 at 15:38
Thanks Mike!
Just ran into this bizarre issue and your info saved me possibly hours of valuable time!
November 20th, 2008 at 12:54
Thanks ever so much – worked a treat – how did you find it out :)
November 22nd, 2008 at 21:01
Wow! Great fix! I found this on Pg1(#8) on Google.
Saved me from having to redo the page I was working on!
Thanks a Ton!
November 23rd, 2008 at 22:32
When I stumbled across this page, I laughed. I doubted this was my problem and that such a simple fix would keep me from hurling my monitor into a wall.
But it worked. Just like that. I right clicked my css file and there was the devil’s number, 8,192 bytes.
Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to figure this out?
November 24th, 2008 at 9:07
Hi Mary (#110), Eric (#108),
I was a very early adopter of Dreamweaver CS3 and this bug hit me quite soon after I started using it and on more than one occasion.
First, I tried other solutions that had worked in the past (reinstalling Dreamweaver, clearing out config files). So because in the interim both colleagues and I had worked on the problem files in other editors thereby changing their sizes, the measures taken “appeared” to have done the trick.
Anyway, there was nothing to be found on the Internet, since it was so soon after the version of DW had been released. The time I found out about the 8,192 thing, David Powers had only just posted his comment as described above. My action was therefore simply to help publicise the fix because by acting as a multiplier, so that others might find it more quickly than I did. Nowadays, there are of course many more folks who have multiplied the fix, though very, very few of them credit David Powers.
So if you want to know what sort of forensic hunch brought David to the fix, you’d have to ask him and I’d be interested to know too. Given his distinguished background, though, it’s probably no surprise he sussed it out!
November 25th, 2008 at 0:38
Hi Mike…
I don’t know if you’ll get this or not, but I had this exact same mistake happen to a PHP file of mine in DW-CS3. I spent a couple of hours researching online to see why my DW program had suddenly crashed and nothing applied until I came to your article.
I thought “No way! What would the odds be?” But when I looked at the Properties window of the last file I knew I had been working on and it read 8,192 bytes, I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT!
But it was.
It took me less than a minute to fix it according to your blog and now, I am happy to say, I am back in business!
Thankyouthankyouthankyou!
It’s like such a small thing, but if you don’t know how to fix it or where to look, AND if you hadn’t have posted this blog, I don’t know what I would have done.
Again, thank you!
Teri
T&I Grafix
November 25th, 2008 at 9:29
Glad to hear you’re back up and running, Teri!
November 25th, 2008 at 16:43
Genius. Saved us a load of time and money. Thanks!!!
November 25th, 2008 at 21:09
Hi again…
I just had to include this. I was just reading some former comments above and actually, when I fixed the problem yesterday with the one PHP file, I thought it had fixed everything. But when I tried to load the folder again, it crashed DW again.
I looked through all the files in that folder and I checked all the files that said the file size was 8kb and I found something that Kyle above (in post #53) mentioned. If I had a file that said it was 8kb, I opened the properties window and it would say File Size: 8.42kb (or whatever) but the File Size on Disk was exactly 8,192 bytes. I had 4 files total that this happened with only in that one folder.
So I did just change all 4 files like you said and I haven’t had any more problems, but I thought that was interesting that Kyle above also mentioned that File Size on Disk thing. Not sure why both of those numbers wouldn’t be identical, but anyway… there you are.
I’m just so glad to be working again without any more problems or crashing, etc. It really is an amazing fix!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Teri
November 26th, 2008 at 14:13
Hi, Teri!
There’s a difference between the file size and the size on disk because the former is the actual size of the file and the latter is the amount of space allocated to it on the disk. These folks have it down:
http://forums.aliensoup.com/showthread.php?t=6985
Accordingly, the relationship between the figures always depends on the nature and composition of the file.
Elsewhere, unfortunately being based in Europe I don’t get to enjoy Thanksgiving, so I’ll have to wait until Christmas for the holidays. Nevertheless, the festive markets are now starting to open here in Brussels and in the secret freezer containers, the magical ice sculptures are already taking shape.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and everyone over there in the States!
November 28th, 2008 at 3:41
Wow. You saved me hours of frustrating trouble shooting. Late last night DW CS3 crashed and I rebooted my machine. Tonight I fired up DW and nothing, your article was the first one I checked on google. Thank you.
November 30th, 2008 at 3:01
Thanks a million Mike! Would never have figured this one out without your help. It’s an obscure bug but seems to me it’s been around for some time (mininum 11 months) and would seem worth patching by Adobe.
November 30th, 2008 at 23:43
[...] by Mike Padgett. Check his great article about this [...]
December 12th, 2008 at 17:07
Crazy, my CSS file wasn’t at the dreaded 8,182 bytes but hovering at 14kb…opened it up in notepad as Dreamweaver would only flash and close.
Added a few lines of comments to change the file size and now all is well.
Thanks!
December 15th, 2008 at 19:10
Wow, second result on google for dw cs3 crashing and i get this site with the same problem. 8,192!! crazy!
December 17th, 2008 at 8:29
Hi Guys,
I found a reason why my dreamweaver was being crashed on startup, it also might be same problem you are facing,
just wanna to share my experience,
just check if any one of your CSS file contains following at the top of your CSS file,
‘@charset “utf-8″;’
just remove it from any other editor(notepad, any text editor), and dreaweaver will load fine,
if problem still persist, you can try to rename ‘Configuration’ folder located in following location
C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\Configuration
on startup dreamweaver will recreate it and that may also solve ‘dreamweaver crash at startup’ problem
take a try,
bye
Vinay Rajput
December 23rd, 2008 at 16:28
I know this serves little purpose in helping out others, but I have to congratulate the genius who found this bug and saved me hours in trying to fix it.
Saved my bacon, thanks!
December 23rd, 2008 at 23:17
It was corrupted CSS styles data for me not file size; a few lines of code got messed up which once cleared out worked fine.
January 4th, 2009 at 18:54
Thank you! I was crying here and couldnt understand what was wrong! But this worked! And no i didnt believe you! :)
January 6th, 2009 at 18:24
Many thanks
January 9th, 2009 at 20:08
I was editing my html file, dw crashed, i rebooted my computer. Then DW didn’t start. I checked the size of my html file, it was compressed, showing 22Kb total which was 8.192bytes on disk!
I renamed, tried to increase the size, deleted the file.. Nothing happened. DW still crashes on splash screen while “initializing server behaviors”.
I really need help on this :/
Thanks a lot.
January 9th, 2009 at 22:54
As with every previous comment…wow…thanks so much! 32768 (x4 multiple) jumped out at me as soon as I read this…amazing, this would have been days of investigating…
January 9th, 2009 at 23:01
Hi Yamac,
It does sound like the same bug, but it’s strange that you’re still getting the problem even after you changed / deleted the 8,192kb file.
Have you got any other 8,192kb files in the structure of your Site? Other folks have also reported the fix working for different sizes (usually multiples or divisibles of 8,192kb).
You could also try Vinay’s (#122) suggestion above if that doesn’t help. That’s a different bug but it has similarities.
Please let us know if you succeed and I sincerely hope you do!
January 13th, 2009 at 14:17
Unbelivable!!!
That was it!
January 14th, 2009 at 3:53
I can’t believe it worked!! thanks bud
January 14th, 2009 at 19:26
Thank goodness for this information. I spent an hour on the phone with IT support, trashed the cache, and a variety of other things to get the app to open. Unfortunately any time that I opened a file attached to or the CSS file with the 8192k file size, it crashed. I added a line of comment code and I’m good to go. Is this some programmer’s idea of a rotten easter egg?
January 15th, 2009 at 21:42
Thanks for tha help, solved my problem. how odd, reminds me of the adobe DW daylight savings bug.
January 15th, 2009 at 21:50
Thanks mate! unbelieveble. You helped me so much!
January 17th, 2009 at 20:58
WTF????? This is the most ludicrous bug I have EVER heard of. It’s like your car cutting out if you do EXACTLY 34.6mph for 10 seconds. I can’t believe that this has wiped me out for a day……:( Thanks SO much for the fix.
January 19th, 2009 at 16:15
OMG!!! This is weird! This happened to me, and all of the developers I work with were in shock. C’mon Adobe fix your issue. It’s funny because a lot of the customers for dw could figure out how to patch the bug. Anyhow thanks for your post, I will relay your findings to other poor souls. Does anyone know of a Patch release?
January 19th, 2009 at 17:05
[...] http://www.mikepadgett.com/technology/technical/dreamweaver-cs3-crashes-and-wont-start-up-again/ [...]
January 20th, 2009 at 16:21
You are the man! My dreamweaver crashed last night and I just gave up and went to bed. I try to open dreamweaver today and find that “initializing files” is where it hangs up and sends an error. I went to a few different sites to find the answer and who would have thunk that its as easy as changing the name of a folder name.
Thanks so much!
January 20th, 2009 at 18:43
[...] right now I am completely baffled! I came across these two articles: Number one at Mike Padgett.com and the second a link from that site to David Powers on Google [...]
January 20th, 2009 at 18:59
Oh, my!
That is re-donkulus!
!!
January 21st, 2009 at 21:43
This just happened to me twice in two months. 8,192 bytes. Crazy.
January 22nd, 2009 at 14:09
cheers Mike, you have saved me a lot of time here.
inexplicable!
January 27th, 2009 at 13:33
Hi Mike,
You are a life saver!
Quick search on google with this exact problem and there you were. Phew.
Like many others, I open a blank file and start coding for a good long while especially in CSS files and library files and get this error all the time.
What I have also noticed (now that all is explained) is that I sometimes go just over the 8,192 bytes and it crashes but I am allowed to restart dreamweaver as it may have got to 8,194 bytes as it crashed.
Anyway when it suddenly hits the exact problem talked about here I am really glad that i’m not just unlucky and have a rubbish computer…
Thanks again.
January 27th, 2009 at 21:38
Hello Mike,
You have saved me a lot of time. I’ve found your comment whithin 5 minutes and it seemed i had the same problem.
good job,
February 5th, 2009 at 16:55
ADOBE DREAMWEAVER MX, ADOBE DREAMWEAVER CS3, ADOBE DREAMWEAVER CS4, ADOBE, ADOBE, ADOBE.
ok the bit above is for seo, hopefully this would add even more ADOBE keywords into this posting.
i have been trying to download image files via ftp, ok there are quite a few (about 5,0000) and every time i do Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 crashes, and says “out of memory”.
however i have 2 GB of ram, and not even 1/2 of it is being used, so from my point of view this is nothing to do with ‘lack of memory’.
so, i ring up adobe uk – who forward me to adobe usa – who after doing some fairly obvious things came up with a solution!
stop using ftp in dreamweaver and use another product.
so i ask to make a complaint, the answer .. no you cant.
so i ask to esculate this to another adviser .. no you cant
now i have just read the above posting its seems amazing that Adobe has not been sued, either personally or by the DTI – as clealry their products ‘are not fit the purpose they were bought for’.
anyone agree?
so know i have to go check over 4,000 images on their sizes! arrhhh
** was the statement correct that it can be *ANY multiple of 8,192 eg 16,384 etc – can someone confirm, or not, this??
excellent posting, thanks for the information.
February 5th, 2009 at 16:56
update to above posting, not 50,000 images but 5,000.
February 7th, 2009 at 7:48
This has got to be one of the strangest bugs I’ve come across! Work around worked great, thanks!
February 11th, 2009 at 8:01
This worked like a charm. I suspect that if people have been getting this as routinely as we have listed, then it’s likely something to do with editing one of the pre-made features of Dreamweaver. I was editing the CSS file for a spry tab widget when it occurred. I read this article, then added some white space to the bottom of the CSS file and voila! I’m back in business. Thanks!
February 17th, 2009 at 16:44
Many thanks for this fix ! It saved me a lot of grey hairs !
February 19th, 2009 at 0:31
Wow, thanks for the tips. That’s the weirdest bug I have ever seen. I only move my css file, and then, DW came back, alive, like a new born.
Well, I kept my file on another folder, so I will change some values to keep it out of the monstuous “8,192 bytes”.
Thanks again
February 19th, 2009 at 16:15
i think i love you! many many thanks. just backed up my computer … twice :)
February 21st, 2009 at 21:44
Oh how I wish I’d found you first! But many many thanks nonetheless. Unfortunately I tried everything under the sun. My only consolation is I may have fixed a number of unrelated but bothersome vista bugs along the way. sigh.
I took the advice of one of your commenters and went on over to the Adobe bug report page, so blithely called a wishform. (Because wishing is all we get?)
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform
This is what I told them:
******BUG******
Concise problem statement: DW crashes when file size reaches 8,192 kbs.
Steps to reproduce bug:
1. Edit file within DW
2. Save file
3. …
Results: If file happens to be 8,192 kbs, then DW crashes and won’t restart.
Expected results: Not this, obviously.
This is a known bug! Why the heck don’t you include information about it in your Troubleshooting Dreamweaver page??? Honestly, a little common sense please. I just wasted 6 hours working my way through your troubleshooting steps when one sentence from you could have put me on the right path. Anyone might think you are so embarrassed by this ridiculous bug that you refuse to admit it exists.
******END OF MY WISH******
I didn’t even bother to wish for a fix. Call me jaded.
Maybe if enough of us give them a little kick we can turn wishes into results…?
February 23rd, 2009 at 21:29
Bless you! Bless you! Bless you! I was saving a css file when Dreamweaver crashed and just like everyone else I rebooted the computer but to no avail. Found this on Google and lo and behold my css file size was 8,192. I moved the site folder where Dreamweaver couldn’t find it and Dreamweaver started just fine. I changed the file size by editing the css file in notebook and saved but when moved the site folder back, Dreamweaver still wouldn’t open. I started looking at the file sizes of other documents in that folder and there were 2 others that were 8,192. One was an html and the other was a txt document. As soon as I edited those to increase their file size Dreamweaver seems to be behaving well for the time being. Thank you so much.
February 23rd, 2009 at 22:39
Damn, your good. I thought by chance, lets google the dreamweaver crash problem, low and be hold, other people had the same problem as me, but why?!?! It was my css file at the exact KB (now thats weird by chance). I amended the file in notepad by adding a few more lines of code, which solved the problem. You are Genious!!!
February 23rd, 2009 at 23:49
Thank you for posting this. Had the same problem and the fix worked right away!
February 24th, 2009 at 18:15
OMG, that is crazy. Thank you so much for this information, just wished it would of come a little sooner while I still had hair and my sanity.
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
February 25th, 2009 at 18:46
Worked for me.
The size of my file was 16384, changed a fews bits and He-presto Dreamweaver works again.
Crazy crazy world.
Many thanks
February 26th, 2009 at 22:59
[...] thanks to Mike Padgett who provided a detailed fix on his site last year. Amazingly, Dreamweaver CS3 crashes when you edit a file to exactly a multiple of 8,192 [...]
March 2nd, 2009 at 0:29
I cannot believe this! I thought I was going mad. Whoever figured this out is truly a genius. A billion thanks to you.
March 2nd, 2009 at 13:27
Don’t know how many times this has happened to me since I got CS3!!
I’ve done some editing on my latest ‘crash file’ in notepad but whilst the size of the file changes, the size on disk is still 32768 bytes which divides by 8192 by 4!! :(
Noticed some of your comments go back almost a year… wish Adobe would pull their fingers out their backsides and get this sorted!!!
But thanks a lot for your tip! I’ll just keep editing in Notepad till the size on disk goes up!! :)
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:09
I was fortunate to have googled “Dreamweaver CS3 won’t open” and finding this article on one of my first hits. I checked my css file and sure enough…. 8,192 bytes. Quite an interesting bug (and hilarious, too)
Thanks!
March 5th, 2009 at 15:26
something odd happened to DW cs3 this week. Now when I start it up it sits at the splash screen doing nothing for about 45 sec and then the standard task screen appears – anyone else have this or a solution?
March 6th, 2009 at 0:15
Thanks for the helpful fix! It saved me a ton of time, what a bizarre bug!
March 6th, 2009 at 17:14
What an amazing bug! Worth keeping as a feature just because its so amazing. Thanks for the help.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:20
Thanks for this solution but I also found that it may not have to be a multiple of 8192.
I have a file the following size (this was a css file)
63.9 KB (65,529 bytes)
This caused Dreamweaver to close instantly.
I simply put a space on the end of any line in Notepad which made the file size: 63.9 KB (65,530 bytes)
Dreamweaver now opens OK (until the next time!!!!)
March 7th, 2009 at 16:03
Mike,
thank you so much for this post.
I was happily working away in DW w/ css file (as you described)..then CRASH! DW wouldn’t reopen. I restart. same result.
did a g search, your post was first.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING. I was just about to fore go all my snippets and customized stuff for a reinstall..then thought I should check online first.
you rock dude!
March 10th, 2009 at 17:23
Thank you so much for taking time to write this. I was so shocked to find that my CSS file size was exactly 8,192 bytes! I followed your advise and Dreamweaver is working again :)
March 13th, 2009 at 14:01
Thank you so much for publishing this issue / solution, you saved my sanity.
March 23rd, 2009 at 17:06
…what if your file size allocation on the drive is exactly 8,192 bytes?
I had one file of the dreaded size, but the small files on the desktop are all given a 8,192 byte space allocation.
Does this also affect Dreamweaver opening files?
March 23rd, 2009 at 20:21
WE HAD THE SAME PROBLEM. I READ THIS ARTICLE AND LOW & BEHOLD :
8,192
I tried opening DW again, but this time instead of letting it run through the cache I clicked cancel and BAM it didn’t read the files before opening and just opened. REALLY EASY FIX, was happening on two computers at same time (Yep, they were accessing the same site with the same file in it)!!!
March 26th, 2009 at 12:13
Thanks Mike, I’m so glad I stopped to read your article on this bug. My file was actually 16384 bytes (exactly twice as big)!
Freaky bug the odds of which obviously aren’t as small as you would first think. I read something somewhwere else that CS4 has a button to stop the site caching process, don’t know if it will solve this though.
I’ve left a link on twitter to this post as I’m sure others will find it helpful.
March 27th, 2009 at 19:01
Thank you so much for publishing this fix, you have saved me my weekend!
BTW I called Adobe support in the UK at 4:45pm Friday to ask about this, to be honest I expected a wait to get through, but I got a message that support was not available and to call another time, what service eh?
Thanks again
Matt
March 27th, 2009 at 22:24
Saved my day! The weird thing that I enjoyed was using notepad to change the file back to 8192, and watching Dreamweaver crash. HAHA, what a stupid bug.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:10
man you just saved my life, my file size was 57344 bytes!
March 30th, 2009 at 9:55
I was totally dumbfounded when this happened to me – fortunately this is one of the first websites I came across. Lo and behold, 8,192 bytes!
I was so surprised I actually embedded part of this article (with a nod to you of course) within my CSS document within a comment as a record. I just couldn’t believe that it had happened to me.
Relief is an understatement. I thought I was going to have to reinstall or worse – upgrade AGAIN to CS4. Frankly I’m just going to wait for CS5 this time.
THANKS!!
March 30th, 2009 at 22:44
[...] was on the verge of reinstalling the whole OS when another of my teammates found this funny article after some research on the net. Exactly like this article says : we couldn’t believe it. I [...]
April 2nd, 2009 at 16:48
I had the same problem but my css file was 16k, so, it looks like the is a problem with any multiple of 8k. I just added extra dummy code and problem solved.
April 2nd, 2009 at 16:53
If fact I just rechecked my css file and it was 16,384. Exactly double…. weird.
April 7th, 2009 at 20:57
Wow.. that’s pretty incredible. Horrible… but incredible.
My file was 16,384 bytes…. divide that in half and you get 8,192.
alright adobe… what have you done now…
April 8th, 2009 at 18:31
you are amazing! i have no idea how you figured that out but you saved my life!!!
Thanks again
April 10th, 2009 at 12:38
Thank you #122!
You saved my day.
April 11th, 2009 at 21:10
You sir, saved me from a mental breakdown! You cant even begin to imagine how appreciative i am that you saved my workday. Thank you :)
April 12th, 2009 at 21:13
I’m not sure if I believe this…I’ve read it all over the web and I searched through my files and didn’t find an 819 byte sized file…cs3 is still not loading for me…
April 14th, 2009 at 18:42
Can I just tell you that this issue has happened to me TWICE!!!! TWICE!!!!!
April 17th, 2009 at 14:50
Thanks for the post, fix worked like a charm.
I had just wasted about 4 hours uninstalling, searching for disks, and reinstalling dreamweaver.
April 18th, 2009 at 2:09
I found you through Google researching the sudden strange behavior of DWCS3 – thank goodness I found your answer! Folks, when I read this first, I thought – ya right…but I went along with it and sure enough…to my amazement my CSS file was exactly the same size. Renaming the site folder enabled me to open DW back up. Adding a simple comment to my CSS file and then saving it fixed the problem. I could then rename my original site folder back to what it was originally.
What a stupid error! I am sure people would actually uninstall DW and would end up going insane from this bug. Thank you so much for posting this answer, you saved me lots of time and stress!
Cheers from Canada!
April 22nd, 2009 at 14:22
What are the chances?! Thanks for the fix on this issue, for a moment there I had that dreaded feeling of having to reinstall.
April 25th, 2009 at 21:24
I cant belive that…. almost thought i was going to have to reinstall!
April 27th, 2009 at 6:23
yep, it’s still out there, still happening in april 09 on cs3…
April 28th, 2009 at 15:01
Cool, thnx! the problem is not gone yet =)
April 29th, 2009 at 18:30
WOW! 8,192 bytes. Who would have ever thought that would have caused such a problem??? Thanks so much for posting this! This saved me so much effort and fixed the problem right away!
April 30th, 2009 at 15:34
Unbelievable – surely the most obscure bug ever? I’d have never figured that one out, thanks for the post!
May 2nd, 2009 at 14:34
Mike, thanks for this priceless post. Without it I’d have been tearing my hair out wondering why DWCS3 suddenly stopped working.
It’s comforting to know that in 2009, there are still bugs around that can make you feel like it’s 1995. ;)
May 5th, 2009 at 10:41
Thanks for this post. When I read the post and saw the 8,192 thing, I thought, yeah, right! Then I checked my css file. I had exactly the same screenshot! Amazing. Almost like magic.
Many thanks again for posting this. Internet and search engines are amazing.
May 8th, 2009 at 5:36
Incredible!…and what a genius to figure this one out. I located the last css file (of course it was 8,192 bytes!), added white space in notepad and like magic all resolved. Thanks a million ;)
May 9th, 2009 at 4:57
Thanks for posting this…. I was stuck in it for around 1 day, tried everything and then I found your solution…..worked like magic!!
May 11th, 2009 at 17:16
Thank you for finding this glitch.
I just about fell out of my chair when I found your solution. This has got to be the oddest error I have ever seen. Sure enough my CSS file was a multiple of 8,192 (16,384).
May 12th, 2009 at 10:24
Utterly unbelievable! thank you for saving my sanity with this madness (and my wife thanks you as well!)
May 12th, 2009 at 17:17
I have been working in DW for over 5 years for my freelance business. Yesterday, I was working in it at the University where I also work (Northern Arizona University – The W. A. Franke College of Business).
I was moving along, developing a css for a new site when CRASH. And on re-start, attempt at re-launch, NO GO (beyond the DW startup screen)!
My IT guy came to my rescue (Seth, my hero) and searched the web and found you.
Sure enough, the css file I had been working on was 8K – I opened it in Notepad and modified it to increased the size and Voila – DW launched flawlessly!
You are now my new hero, as well.
THANK YOU!
tmsr
May 14th, 2009 at 20:30
Holy Crap I did not think it would work. It just sounds too f’ing simple. It worked. I just looked in my site and found a file that was 8k, opened it in notepad, added a lot of white space. Saved it, which made it 9k. I tried opening DW3 and it opened.
May 14th, 2009 at 21:26
OHMYGOD! It could easily pass as an april fools joke, but it is not! Happend to me! I tried almost everything and, then, I just changed the .css file at notepad++. Since it’s not 8,192bytes anymore, dw cs3 is working fine again!
May 15th, 2009 at 20:42
It is the same for vista worked like a charm. Thank you so much. I fumbled around all day only to fine this and fixe the problem in 5 minutes.
May 15th, 2009 at 23:18
I don’t know how you figured this out, but it’s exactly what happened to me. And, your solution of adding more bytes to my css file worked perfectly. Thank you!!!
May 16th, 2009 at 23:34
Wow. There it was, 8192kb. Thanks for this, I was contemplating having to edit with Notepad…shudder…
May 20th, 2009 at 13:01
Unbelievable….. but it just did the trick! This just saves al lot of time on reinstalling etc. Thanks for the solution.
May 25th, 2009 at 19:00
It would appear that this bug comes into play at other file sizes. Came across your solution and did the test of renaming the website folder and got DW CS3 working again. But I had no files at the 8KB size that I was recently working on. The last file I was editing before the crash was a CSS file at 16KB (16386 bytes).
Edited the file to up the filesize and we’re up and running. Take away the added code and DW’s a goona again.
Thought you’d like to know.
Did a debug but too much data to post here.
May 27th, 2009 at 13:41
Many, many thanks for publishing this information.
I spent today probably 10 hours re-installing CS3 and calling Adobe Customer Service in India (where else it could be today?) at least 6 times. They told me – if I pay them $39, they will re-install CS3 and it will solve the problem!
Of course I refused to pay $39, downloaded Microsoft clean up utility KB290301 and Adobe script CS3Clean,re-installed CS3 myself (Why it should be so difficult re-install the software? I don’t get it…)
And… it didn’t help!!! The Dreamweaver was still crushing on Start Up!
And then I turned to the best Customer Service line today – Mr. Google! And found this article. Thanks again you for publishing it!
IT WORKED!
I couldn’t change the size of CSS file, so downloaded the previous version of website from production and it solved the problem!
We should name this bug – 8192_bug. And thank Mr. Google too.
May 28th, 2009 at 13:24
This bug had me pulling out my hair for hours! It’s only because of Google and Mike Padgett that I have some hair left. Thank you so very much!
May 28th, 2009 at 13:33
Keeping whatever you’ve got left of your hair is important, Frank. Glad you found what you were looking for ;-)
June 3rd, 2009 at 19:48
This is unbelievable. Unfortunately for me, my company has several files that are that exact size. I just need Dreamweaver for my own personal site thought and not the company site. How can I delete the site entirely out of Dreamweaver without opening it (considering it crashes every time I try to open it)?
June 3rd, 2009 at 20:02
what is also interesting is that when I check the properties of the Dreamweaver application itself, it is 4,096 bytes. Exactly half of 8,192. Does that have anything to do with this or just a coincidence???
June 4th, 2009 at 9:51
Yes, the smaller file size is probably related. If you want to delete a site in the way you asked, just temporarily rename the actual folder the site files are stored in. Dreamweaver will start as normal, then you can go to “Manage Sites…” and delete the site there.
June 4th, 2009 at 20:47
wow it is STILL crashing! I’d like to just uninstall it and reinstall, but I purchased the product online. Here we go with Adobe support…
June 5th, 2009 at 8:32
Thank you very much for the brilliant solution. Your advise save a lot of my time to fix the bug. The DW working fine after I edit the css file using notepad.
June 5th, 2009 at 12:08
Thanks a lot! I had exactly this problem. my CSS file was 2×8192 bytes long and my Dreamweaver crashed and refused to start again. I filled the CSS file with some /* comments and solved it.
June 5th, 2009 at 14:43
I just uninstalled CS4 because it just kept crashing no matter what I do. Does anyone know how to reinstall it? I don’t have a disc or anything because I bought it offline. I don’t know how to download it again and Adobe support is worthless.
June 12th, 2009 at 20:48
Ok I knew i had an odd problem….but i NEVER EVER thougt it would be THIS odd. Luckily, the solution is as stupid an simple as the problem itself.
June 15th, 2009 at 21:30
oh my god, you save the day man. i exactly had the SAME problem. i cant beleive…
June 16th, 2009 at 17:05
Wholy crap, I was editing a css file and had this exact thing happen. Sure enough, 8,192 bytes. You’re my hero Mike.
June 18th, 2009 at 16:22
Thanks for this information. I just had the same problem today when I made an edit to a CSS file that bumped it up to almost exactly 3 times 8,192 bytes. Tried your fix and it worked like gangbusters.
June 19th, 2009 at 16:50
Well I can’t thank you enough. Exactly the same problem for me too. I almost didn’t bother to check this as I thought it was a spoof but low and behold my css file which was crashing was 8kb. I can’t believe this bug has not been fixed by an update. Shame on Adobe.
June 19th, 2009 at 20:20
Very weird bug. I had the problem, and your solution fixed it. Thanks so much. I was afraid I would have to reinstall DW.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:16
Crazy – yeah I totally had that problem. Added white space, increased file size, and problem was fixed. Thanks so much!
~ James
June 23rd, 2009 at 21:35
UNBELIEVABLE!
how do they sell a product with this bug.
thanks for the solution.