recently my pc has taken to randomly resetting itself. seems to happen whether i'm using it or not. fortunately it doesn't happen often, and hasn't yet upset me in the middle of a chop, but it's maybe once or twice a week, and sooner or later it's gonna get me

i couldn't see any auto-save facility in photoshop. is there one? is there a workaround other than continually pressing ctrl+s?

you might try writing a script that launches an action that would save the file every once in a while, way too complicated, just save manually at every major operation use the history palette as well (go check the tutorials there).If your computer crashes you may find the file you were working on in your photoshop temporary folder (varies if you're on windows or os x), get the latest temp file and rename it to .PSD, open it, you got it back.