Photoshop Crashes When Using Brush Tool - Blue Screen - Ruined Photos

Question

I'm having a very frustrating problem with Photoshop on my laptop. Nearly every time I start using the Brush tool, my computer has a Blue Screen. The error code varies slightly each time. Today it was "Machine Check Exception", other times it has been "CPU Watchdog Timeout".

To make matters worse, Photoshop often destroys the image I was working on. Sometimes part of the photo becomes black, this time 3/4 of the photo has a yellow tint to it. There's no way to salvage the data.

I don't understand how this could be happening, since I'm not saving the image during the Blue Screen. Why would Photoshop destroy a TIFF file because of a Blue Screen?

This is a repeatable problem on my laptop, as the only time I have a Blue Screen is with the Brush Tool. No other process in Photoshop has a problem.

I'm using the latest Intel drivers, I've done a clean install. This has been happening for months now, regardless of the Intel graphics driver I use.

It seems the underlying issue is some incompatability between Intel and Photoshop, but I don't understand why it only crashes when using the Brush tool specifically. Any ideas? I'm about ready to just buy a new laptop at this rate.

System Specs:
Machine name: LG-GRAM
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 19045) (19041.vb_release.191206-1406)
System Manufacturer: LG Electronics
System Model: 17Z95P-K.AAE8U1
BIOS: T4ZF0060 X64 (type: UEFI)
Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1195G7 @ 2.90GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.9GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Card name: Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics
Manufacturer: Intel Corporation
Chip type: Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics Family

TheDigitalDog · Answer

When Photoshop crashes, this is the first thing to do, try resetting your Photoshop preferences. Press and hold Alt+Control+Shift (Windows) or Option+Command+Shift (macOS) immediately after launching Photoshop. You will be prompted to delete the current settings. You can also reset preferences upon a quit if Photoshop is running by going into General Preferences>General>Reset on Quit.

This action only affects the items found in the preferences dialog box. Numerous program settings are stored in the Adobe Photoshop Preferences file, including general display options, file-saving options, performance options, cursor options, transparency options, type options, and options for plug‑ins and scratch disks. Brushes (and lots of other setting) are not affected by the above instructions for deleting preferences. You may wish to make a screen capture of the settings in the Preferences dialog to reset them prior to deleting of this file.

Also: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html

To manually delete Photoshop preferences:
Quit Photoshop.
Navigate to Photoshop's Preferences folder.
(macOS only) Open the Preferences folder in the Library folder**,and drag the Adobe Photoshop Settings folder to the Trash from the following path:
macOS: Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings
Windows: Users/[user name]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop [version]/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings

**Note:The user Library folder is hidden by default on macOS. In the Finder, hold down the Option key when using the Go menu. The library will appear below the current user's home directory.
Now you can drag the entire Adobe Photoshop [Version] Settings folder to the desktop or somewhere safe for a backup of your settings

If that doesn't fix the issue:
Go to Preferences > Performance... and uncheck Multithreaded Compositing - and restart Photoshop.
Still crashing?
Go to Preferences > Performance... click Advanced Settings... and uncheck "GPU Compositing" - then restart Photoshop. Still crashing?

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