Twice a year for seemingly no apparent reason Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 crashes randomly. Adobe has acknowledged that there is an issue when working with certain PHP or ASP files in Code view or Design view after the clock goes back one hour, when Daylight Savings Time ends. The crashes only occur when selecting certain lines in Code view, or selecting certain objects in Design view. The crashes only occur in files that have PHP or ASP code, intermingled with HTML code. The crashes do not occur in Dreamweaver 8 or earlier.
Adobe states that the Dreamweaver CS3 crashes occur after Daylight Savings Time ends, however I have experienced this issue both before and after the Daylight Savings Time change.
The reason Dreamweaver keeps crashing is that the WinFileCache-AD76BB20.dat file has been corrupted by the time change.
Here’s the solution to prevent Dreamweaver crashes:
- If Dreamweaver is open, quit the application.
- Delete the WinFileCache-AD76BB20.dat file from the Dreamweaver user configuration folder. Note that on Windows, the Application Data and AppData folders are hidden by default, so verify that your Windows Explorer folder options are set to View Hidden Folders. The location of this file is as follows:
- For Dreamweaver CS3 on Windows Vista:
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\Configuration - For Dreamweaver CS3 on Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\Configuration
- For Dreamweaver CS3 on Windows Vista:
- Restart Dreamweaver.
This has been an issue with Dreamweaver CS3 for some time now. I really hope that Adobe will publish an update for Dreamweaver CS3 that will fix this annoying bug.