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Coestar
Participating Frequently
June 28, 2012
Question

Photoshop CS5 12.1 Eventually Won't Open Files or New Documents

  • June 28, 2012
  • 6 replies
  • 43039 views

I have been experiencing a problem with Photoshop CS5 12.1 in which, after a variable amount of time from a system restart, Photoshop will no longer open files or create new ones.  It is very difficult to search for and/or explain the nature of this problem, but I will try my best.

Photoshop behaves completely normally after a fresh reboot of Windows until this problem presents itself.

The problem has manifested itself during use and before use.  If it occurs during use, it seems that various features of Photoshop stop working.  For example: I can't save files that are open.  Photoshop will go through the motions of doing a "File > Save as...", but nothing happens on the file system.  Restarting Photoshop at this point does not resolve the problem.

If Photoshop is already in this non-functional state upon opening, files cannot be opened nor new files created.  Here is what happens during an attempt to open a file:

  1. Click "File > Open..."
  2. Open dialog is shown, I browse to select a ".psd" file to open
  3. Once file is selected, click "Open" button on dialog
  4. Dialog disappears, but document never opens

If I try to use "File > New...", the New dialog never appears.

Once in this state, the only way to use Photoshop normally again is to do a full system reboot.  This seems to indicate that something is slowly happening on my system (such as RAM usage) that eventually renders Photoshop inoperable.  However, at the time of failure, there appears to be ample resources available for Photoshop to use.  It has been difficult to troubleshoot this problem beyond this point.

Please let me know if I need to clarify any of this further.

System Information Dumps:

PS Sysinfo (post failure) http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=9N53jGQC

DXDiag (post failure) http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=x5euCLqn

If it would be useful to include information from a fresh restart (pre failure), please let me know and I will provide those too.

Thanks for your help!

This topic has been closed for replies.

6 replies

Participating Frequently
October 29, 2015

Guys, this was solved in another thread:

Re: Can't Create/Open new File - Photoshop CC

Open up photoshop when it's bugged out, and hit Ctrl + Pause(Break)  (it's normally next to Print Screen).

I hope with this revelation, Chris can get this issue fixed. Had this issue for 5+ years on 4 PCs, and it's finally gone.

Participant
September 15, 2015

Adobe, this is a clear bug or issue with Photoshop that needs to be hunted down and fixed.  This happens to both my brother and I, on different versions of Photoshop, and completely different hardware configurations.  I do not accept telling people to "run this generic system cleaner" as an official fix.  The best temporary fix is to just simply restart the PC.  I'm pretty certain it's something to do with how Photoshop utilizes the video cards software/hardware acceleration within the video card drive as this bug has survived through multiple re-installations of Windows (from Windows 7, to Windows 10), and several different versions of the graphics driver, as well as different video cards from both AMD and Nvidia.  It's a cockroach.  Please escalate this thread to your software developers.

Chris Cox
Legend
September 16, 2015

So far this has always been caused by third party software. Also, it was only seen by a few users and not seen by the other millions of Photoshop users.

So, indications are that this is not a bug in Photoshop at all.

Participant
November 1, 2013

I just started experiencing this same issue and had a thought that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet, so thought I'd mention it for others to try.

In my case I tried to think of anything I had done differently within the last few days and I remembered leaving my dual monitor screen attached to my laptop when I shut it down which I never do (always disconnect it first).

Could have absolutely nothing to do with it, but I disconnected the monitor, powered off, and back on again without the extended monitor plugged in, started photoshop, and then plugged the monitor in. Working fine so far, but that's to be expected from everyone else's experience (only happens after running for a certain amount of time).

So, I'll report back if things seem stable again after a week or so.

Participating Frequently
November 2, 2013

photoshop works fine with the new keyboard. The old keyboard was in conflict with the software.

Known Participant
July 20, 2014

I had this problem too with CS6, nothing could fix it.  Reinstalling Adobe and drivers, wiping registry, beta nVidia gpu drivers, did nothing I had dual 680 GTX card on SLI.  Then recently I went back to single GPU with a new nVidia card and my problem went away or did not occurred since.

May 3, 2013

I'm having the exact same problem as Coestar. I've reinstalled my OS and the problem persists. After rebooting I can use Photoshop fine for awhile, but it always ends up having this problem at some point during the day, meaning I often have to reboot 3 or 4 times a day just to be able to use Photoshop. I'm using CS6.

Coestar, were you ever able to fix your problem?

station_two
Inspiring
May 3, 2013

Read posts 37 and 38 in this thread.  Both posters solved the issue in different manners:

37.xxLordSnowxx12,

Aug 11, 2012 7:15 AM   in reply to Morgang9869

Report

Hey just wanted to relay what I did to fix this problem and maybe it will help you...first I performed a clean install of win7 on a new SSD. Then without installing anything else just the hardware drivers for my system I installed cs6. Low and behold the problem was STILL there.

So this pretty much confirmed what I suspected that it was a hardware issue. Since I was planning on upgrading my video card anyway's and this seemed like the most obvious culprit I started there. I upgraded from my old quadro fx 1700 to a quadro 4000 and the problem is no more!!!!

Maybe it had to do with the way I installed the drivers that I had not done before or maybe it was the hardware I'm not sure. Before I installed the new card I used driver sweeper to completely remove any old nvidia drivers...then installed the new card and drivers.

Good luck guys I know how frustrating this problem is and how much time it took out of my life.

Participant
November 24, 2012

I seem to be having the same issue with PS (CS5)

the_wine_snob
Inspiring
November 24, 2012

Welcome to the forum.

Did you do the maintance, that Morgan found successful, and it did not work?

Is that is the case, I would start with supplying all the info asked for in this FAQ Entry: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4587299#4587299

Good luck,

Hunt

Participant
November 25, 2012

Thanks Hunt - I am not very good with the technical aspects of all of this. It is intersting to read the threads tho.  In answer to the questions

  • What version of Photoshop? Include the minor version number (e.g., Photoshop CS5 Extended with the 12.1 x 64).
  • Have you installed the recent updates? all updates current
  • What operating system? Mac OSX v10.7.5"
  • What kind(s) of image file(s)? Nikon - usually jpeg images from Bridge
  • What were you doing when the problem occurred? reopening a project after running PS for a while
  • What other software are you running?
  • Tell us about your computer hardware. 500 GB SATA Disk  427 GB free
  • Has this ever worked before?  Usually if I close PS and restart it - everything works fine
June 28, 2012


How much free space do you have on your hd?  Should have 10-20% free space.

You also have an old ATI driver, but that is probably not problem.  The best is not latest. Get the 12.2 version.

Coestar
CoestarAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 28, 2012

I currently have approx. 30% free space on the installation drive (37GB of 111GB).

Regarding ATI driver versions, I have been experiencing this problem through many versions of ATI drivers.  I have probably had this issue for more than 6 months now.  I upgraded to 12.3 last week, and the problem existed before and after the upgrade, unfortunately.

Noel Carboni
Legend
June 28, 2012

Is your Photoshop scratch drive pointed somewhere else?  37 GB free isn't really enough free space for scratch use.

-Noel