Inspiring

Answered

Photoshop not opening, process runs in background

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
August 25, 2025
7 replies
3329 views

Had no issues for the past 4 years, go into work today and try and open photoshop and nothing happens.

A photoshop background process appears in my task manager and sits there doing nothing. Have uninstalled/reinstalled photoshop and creative cloud and restarted my laptop severall times and the same thing happens. Updated my drivers and even tried switching between game and studio drivers to the same result. Every other adobe application opens fine, just not photoshop..

Even tried going into %appdata% > Local\Adobe\OOBE and deleting the opm.db file, logging out and relaunching creativecloud and again.. nothing. Photoshop refuses to open as anything but a background application???

Went home on my lunch break and booted photoshop 1st try on my home pc.

Windows

Correct answer Brandon26030993wb73

Finally fixed it by deleting all registry folders titled 'Adobe' in the locations in the registry below and deleted all remaining folders in the program and user folders AFTER using the Creative Cloud Uninstaller & Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool, restarted my computer. Photoshop now opens instantly every time!

Would be nice if Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool and the Creative Cloud Uninstaller cleared all these instead of leaving them lurking in the system for users to have to track down and purge manually if they corrupt.

Manual Registry Cleanup (Use with caution):
Disclaimer: Modifying the registry can cause system instability. Back up your registry before making any changes.

1. Open Registry Editor: Press Win + R, type regedit, and press Enter.

2. Back up the registry: Click File > Export to save a backup of your entire registry.

3. Locate and delete keys:

Navigate to and carefully delete any remaining Photoshop-related keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Adobe\\Photoshop
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Adobe\\Photoshop

4. Search for and delete any other specific registry keys related to Photoshop.

5. Restart your computer: to ensure all changes are applied.

6. Clean up leftover folders: in the AppData directories to remove settings and caches.
`C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\`
`C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Local\Adobe\`

7. Install a fresh copy of Creative Cloud and install/run photoshop

8. Sit back, drink a beer and try and forget the hours of troubleshooting you just went through

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Bruce AB

Known Participant

When I launch Photoshop, it starts as a background process and 4 to 5 minutes later it will suddenly start running in the foreground. During that 4 to 5 minute delay there is no splash screen or anything else that indicates what is happening. As many times as you click to start Photoshop, a separate Photoshop task will begin running in the background. After about 5 minutes, when the first Photoshop task starts running in the foreground, the second task either stays in the background or it disappears (it seems to do either unpredictably). Once running in the foreground it seems to stay in the foreground until I exit PS. Then, to start PS in foreground again it's another 5 minute wait even if I power down/up the system, or restart Windows 11, or just start PS without doing either first.

Related problem 1: Once Photoshop is running in the foreground, if I load an image into PS by navigating File / Open, the image will open right away. However, if I run Windows Explorer (or any other app such as ViewNX), find the file, right click and select "Open with Photoshop" it takes 4 - 5 minutes for it to open. So apparently there is this same mysterious 4 - 5 minute delay whether starting Photoshop or opening an image file into PS from another app (it does not seem to matter if image file is .nef, .psd, .jpg, etc).

Related problem 2: There is another problem where I finally load a .nef file into Photoshop (ie am editing in ACR), then while in ACR I click on "open" to return back to Photoshop. I briefly see the Photoshop workspace screen, then it goes back to ACR. If I click "open" a second time, I go back to Photoshop and it may stay there, but at that point I have two images under separate tabs. (I hope this description is understandable).

This problem does not seem to affect Lightroom, Bridge, Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop, nor any unrelated app whether Adobe or non-Adobe.

I have "fixed" this problem twice, only to have it come back a week or two later. Two fixes I have tried with temporary success: 1) I updated my graphics driver (Nvidia GeForce RTX 30360 Ti) to the laterst version 2) I uninstalled Photoshop, went into the registry keys and deleted every key related to Photoshop, then reinstalled Photoshop. Try #2 seemed to last the longest, about a week.

One common suggestion is to reset all preferences back to the defaults. I have tried that and it does not seem to fix the any of the problems described above.

This may be happening only with the Window version. I am running Win 11 w/all updates, both PS 26.10 and now 26.11.

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Aleke

Community Manager

Hi @Bruce AB, thanks so much for reaching out and for all the detailed info!
To help us take a closer look, could you share your System Info with us? You can find it in Photoshop by going to Help > System Info. Just copy the details into a text file and attach it to your reply, or feel free to share it via Google Drive, WeTransfer, or any other file-sharing service you prefer.
Really appreciate it!
Alek

*(If you mention me with an @, like @Aleke, I’ll get a notification and can respond faster.)*

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Bruce AB

Known Participant

Hi @Aleke, thanks for looking at this problem. This is embarrassing but this morning Photoshop is working normally. This has happened in the past, my hope of course is that it doesn't revert back to what it was doing, and if it does I will let you know with a reply here.

I can get a dump of system info only when Photoshop is running in the foreground. I've attached two: one from 9/17/2025 when this problem first started, and another from today 9/30/2025 when the problem is not showing itself.

SystemInfo_09172025.txt

SystemInfo_09302025.txt

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Brandon26030993wb73AuthorCorrect answer

Inspiring

Finally fixed it by deleting all registry folders titled 'Adobe' in the locations in the registry below and deleted all remaining folders in the program and user folders AFTER using the Creative Cloud Uninstaller & Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool, restarted my computer. Photoshop now opens instantly every time!

Would be nice if Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool and the Creative Cloud Uninstaller cleared all these instead of leaving them lurking in the system for users to have to track down and purge manually if they corrupt.

Manual Registry Cleanup (Use with caution):
Disclaimer: Modifying the registry can cause system instability. Back up your registry before making any changes.

1. Open Registry Editor: Press Win + R, type regedit, and press Enter.

2. Back up the registry: Click File > Export to save a backup of your entire registry.

3. Locate and delete keys:

Navigate to and carefully delete any remaining Photoshop-related keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Adobe\\Photoshop
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Adobe\\Photoshop

4. Search for and delete any other specific registry keys related to Photoshop.

5. Restart your computer: to ensure all changes are applied.

6. Clean up leftover folders: in the AppData directories to remove settings and caches.
`C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\`
`C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Local\Adobe\`

7. Install a fresh copy of Creative Cloud and install/run photoshop

8. Sit back, drink a beer and try and forget the hours of troubleshooting you just went through

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affectionate_brain7243

Participant

I tried resetting Photoshop preferences, swapping GPU drivers and Photoshop versions, and even reinstalling several times — nothing worked.

But after doing the registry cleanup you mentioned, the slow startup issue disappeared. Thank you so much!

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Brandon26030993wb73Author

Inspiring

Deleted the entire Adobe Photoshop 2025 Settings, tried launching photoshop again. It created a new Adobe Photoshop 2025 Settings folder but still only launched as a background application

Sameer K

Community Manager

Hey, @Brandon26030993wb73. I've tagged and responded to another one of your comments here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/photoshop-2025-opens-only-as-a-background-process/td-p/15475426

Please try those steps and let me know how it goes here, or on the same thread.

Thanks!

Sameer K
(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

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Annabell35485946ke3y

Participant

Just encountered this issue today! Did you ever find a solution?

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Brandon26030993wb73Author

Inspiring

AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2025\Adobe Photoshop 2025 Settings

Ticked show hidden files but the folder still shows being empty 😞

AxelMatt

Community Expert

Try to reset the preferences to the default settings. Manually removing the preferences files is the most complete method for restoring Photoshop to its default state.

This method ensures all preferences and any user presets which may be causing a problem are not loaded.

Please follow the steps below:

Quit Photoshop.
Navigate to the preferences folder of Photoshop.
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: This folder is hidden by default. To access files in the hidden user Library folder see the appropriate links below.
MacOS: How to access hidden user library files.
Windows: Show hidden files and folders in Windows
Move the entire Adobe Photoshop [Version] Settings folder to a safe place on your drive for a back-up of your settings. Then delete this folder.
Open Photoshop.

Photoshop creates automatically the appropriate settings folder with the default values.

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 8 - PureRAW 5 - Topaz Photo

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Brandon26030993wb73Author

Inspiring

Laptop is an i7 with 64GB's of memory and a 4070ti graphics card.

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Brandon26030993wb73Author

Inspiring

I did notice the icon for creative cloud in my taskbar applications tab on the bottom right has this blue arrow on it now as well?