If Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 is crashing for an unknown reason, it might be worth checking your CSS file sizes. Over the last 4 days I have been pulling my hair out over why Dreamweaver CS3 suddenly crashed, and stopped working, period. Here’s what happened, the problem and the solution:
What happened:
I was working away for a client and between my regular ’saving and testing’ method of working, I somehow managed to break Dreamweaver. I tried many things to mend a broken DW: Restart the computer, clear the application cache, check your files are not corrupt, reinstall the application, check the registry, run an anti-virus scan, restart your computer again… but none of them worked. It was only until I came across a post by The Fuel Agency which provided the solution I was after.
The problem:
Apparently there is a CSS file size bug in DW CS3 where a CSS file size of, or multiples of, 8192 bytes will cause DW to crash.
The solution:
Open your CSS file in notepad and add/remove a few extra lines – all you need to do is change the file size slightly. And voila – DW CS3 should be back up and working as normal! Simple no?
This bug was found on an up-to-date version of Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 for PC. It’s not known if this bug also occurs on Apple machines. If you do know please let me know in the comments.
Tags: bugs, CS3, Dreamweaver
Unbelievable. I entered some code into a CSS file, saved it and Dreamweaver just stopped working. It wouldn’t load. I tried to uninstall/reinstall. Didn’t work. I tried to uninstall all of Creative Suite CS3, do a Level 2 CS3 Clean Up, reinstall the entire suite. Still didn’t work. Read your comments and thought there is no way this could actually work. I added two lines of code into my CSS file and voila, it works fine now.
Crazy, crazy, crazy.
Very happy to hear this post helped you Lynnette! It is still the most bizarre bug I have ever come across.
This one takes the cake. I’m glad I didn’t start uninstalling/reinstalling. What a nightmare that is. Works now. Just deleted a few lines of code and BINGO!
this fix worked for me!
absolutely crazy!
WOW. A Big Thank you. I would never have believed it, and I was just about to start the whole uninstall/reinstall cycle.
Thanks soooo much! Great post, it would take me ages to do all the things you normally do in those kind of situations. Thanks again!
That’s nuts!! Thanks for your help xxx
Instead of ‘multiples of 8192k’ you probably mean ‘multiplies of 8192 bytes’?
Thanks for pointing that out Bigtree! I’ve made this correction. Cheers.
I had the exact same problem a couple weeks ago and luckily there are enough people on forums that talk about it. But seriously that’s a ridiculous bug…
Hi, i have similar problem and i tried adding/removing a line of code into my css file but nothing happens still dreamweaver crashed.Is there anyway to fix? kindly let me know.
hey lems,
you probably need to add more than just one line of code. Add until the actual CSS file exceeds 8 bytes.
Thanks! This was a spot on solution to a crash I had today!
Man, that’s completely bizarre… I have lost a long time trying to fix “bugs” on my code… Then I realized the missing lines… And a simple space, before opening it on dreamweaver, fixed “my bugs”.
This f****** bugs steals 3 days of work from me.
The DW-Development-Department should be killed for this!
Thanx for the “bug fix”
Thanks for this post.
Dreamweaver crashed about 30 minutes ago, for no good reason. I tried to restart but no luck. I Googled for an answer and here you have it.
This ridiculous bug has probably cost a lot of time and money for designers.
Thanks a lot !
Took me just 2 min to fix this awkward bug. Without your post, it have would been longer ! So thank you so much !