Too_Bad

Looks like you nailed it there. I had gone back to 1.6.4 and thought a few hours later that the problem was gone but it popped up again. Followed your advice about the icon cache and wiped it out, rebooted, and let Windows rebuild whatever it needed and have been running for a day with zero problems so far. I'm wondering now if it was caused by me moving images around (moved > 40,000 to NAS from local machine) and Windows just lost track of where everything was. As you said, AP 1.6.5 just was the final kick it needed to quit. Oh well, seems fine now and I'm back on 1.6.5 AP and AD. Thanks!

I've been using AP (and AD) since their early beta stages and always did the updates as they were released. The latest update, to 1.6.5 seems to have a bad effect on Windows' behavior. A folder full of images used to show thumbnail icons of each image but now only has a blank square where each icon should be. The files themselves are fine, just the icons will not display. I can't be 100% sure it is AP 1.6.5 causing this but within an hour of installing it (I gave it a quick try and then left it alone) Windows stopped showing the icons. I reset the box and things went back to normal. Again I started up AP and did a bit of playing and left it alone. When I returned, Windows again had lost the ability to show the thumbnails. I puzzled over this in my sleep and could only come up with AP as being the sole item changed that day. I was up early and uninstalled AP 1.6.5 and reinstalled 1.6.4. It's been running for about 6 hours now, with me checking every once in a while, and all is fine. Could 1.6.5 cause Windows to lose the ability to display thumbnails?

As I said, the guides method does work well. Of interest is that I tried the same thing using a different package, Corel PaintShop (I usually avoid anything Corel,) and got a surprise when I went to do the Shift-Drag. That itself does the draw from the centre without any other messing around. I guess it's more a paint thing rather than a photo processing thing although as much as nature abhors straight lines, it loves circles so I was surprised that photo processing wouldn't have it. But, as was explained, while nature loves circles, photos rarely will contain perfect circles and even if one does, the centre will not usually be conveniently marked. Thanks to all for the explanations.

The guidelines method works perfectly. It's not as easy as just drawing a circle from the centre would be, but it works and that's all that matters. I wonder though why the "centre" method does not exist. The math looks easier than the current method. Anyway, thanks a bunch.

I may be way off topic but what's described in this topic sounds sort of like what I want to do. Take something like a round watch face. Put the cursor in the centre (the axis the hands rotate around) and create a round marquee so I can cut out the face of the watch. It's such a simple idea yet I can't find it anywhere. There has to be some modifier or something that says I'm in the centre, make the circle marquee bigger or whatever. All I can do now is create a rough outline and spend 40-60 minutes going pixel to pixel erasing everything that doesn't look like part of the watch face. Actually, I think MS Paint might be able to do this... :)