P: Photoshop can't open, freezes on splash image, uses all of ram trying to open then crashes.

[Bella5CE6]

I have googled every possible variation of this problem and tried every fix for this problem, none of them worked. I have tried reinstalling photoshop, deleting everything even remotely related to photohop in the appdata, deleting custom fonts, restarting the computer, updating graphics and computer, and holding every possible combination of alt, ctrl and shift while trying to launch in administrator mode. The result is always the same. It opens the splash image, gets to loading preferences or brushes, spikes RAM usage to every last byte of RAM I have, freezes the computer, then crashes.

And no i'm not running it on a potato i'm running it on an Alienware Aurora 4090, it should have more than enough power to handle this and Photoshop ran perfectly fine for months. Then just today it crashed and has never started up again.

Photoshop version 25.11

Help.

[kevin stohlmeyer]

@bellomostudios If you can go to Photoshop help menu/system info and copy/paste details here.

Offhand it sounds like a lack of resouces - first thing that comes to mind is RAM and HD space. How much of each is available?

[kevin stohlmeyer]

@JFHiggins go to Photoshop Help Menu/System info and copy/paste details in a reply here.

[bellomostudios]

I don't think so...I generally have 6-10gb of RAM avaialble and  over 300gb on my HD.  I have been able to open without any problem and none of that changed. 

[bellomostudios]

Illustrator is doing the same thing.  These programs are suddenly just not opening.  Is anyone else having this issue?  

[Jonah Lee Walker]

Yea it just happened to me on Sonoma 14.5, Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192 GB Ram and 76 GPU Cores. The only thing that got it to work was using the Cleaner Tool. What a pain in the ass.

[Indernirwan]

Can confirm that using the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool to clean all Adobe apps off the computer fixed the issue. No idea what caused it, as I did not install any new plug-ins or updates. Photoshop and Illustrator just stopped launching one day.

[Celestial_self0D44]

Do you have your Adobe Creative Cloud apps set to auto-update? I bet that this happened when the auto-update to 25.11 was completed. 

[Jonah Lee Walker]

Nope no auto update for me.

[totoausveroia]

4 years later, still the same problem. had to change to the 2021 Version. Macbookpro M1 64 GB. Sonoma 14.6 

[AXN Studio]

Ran the cleaner on the whole suite because Illustrator was locking up too. So far everything is working.

[defaultk74pi0k89287]

I've been having the same issue for days now. It started when Photoshop Beta wouldn't open. So Installed the regular stable version, and that one won't open either. Premiere, Animate, and After Effects are all still working.  I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Photoshop several times but it freezes on bootup until I either force quit or it sucks up all my memory to where MacOS alerts me there's none left. 

Running a MacBook.  Pro 2023 M2 Max with 32GB Ram on Sonoma 14.5

[Fabiana311399485etr]

I'm facing exactly the same issue for days. 

[Fabiana311399485etr]

Same issue

Macbook Pro M2 Max sonoma 14.6 96GB RAM

[defaultk74pi0k89287]

I found a solution, but you're not going to like it 😅

Uninstalling and reinstalling just Photoshop/Illustrator didn't work, however, after uninstalling every single program INCLUDING creative cloud, then reinstalling creative cloud and reinstalling all my programs, they all work again.

Sucks to have to do it, but it did fix the problem!

[defaultk74pi0k89287]

**clarifying point** uninstalling all adobe programs, not my entire system -- now that would be a true nightmare

[Fabiana311399485etr]

oh lord, no way. I have to handle for 3 more days until my new laptop arrives, i'll keep using on ipad until that.


[Removed by moderator] adobe whyyyyyy, btw in my team at least 2 people have same issue, a M2 max and a M3 max user. I guess it's something with apple silicon 

[meetm20451480]

same error happening with this version

[D Fosse]

Please post the entire Help > System Info from Photoshop.

[Bella5CE6]

How do you expect me to post the System Info from Photoshop from photoshop when photoshop won't open, that's the entire problem.

[Academia Geopol]

I had the same error, (in my case I had in my computer both, Photoshop latest versión and Photoshop Beta latest version, neither of them were working and froze every time I tryied to launch them)  for me the solution was to uninstal Photoshop Beta and it's preferences. Then photoshop worked

[William2388]

Same here. Yesterday worked fine, today photoshop crashes on the splash screen. I tried BETA, tried uninstalling this version and installing a few previous versions, doesn't help. Of course tried rebooting in between installs. Ram spikes to 100 %.

[user39018312rquj]

Same. I have two versions of Photoshop installed on the Windows machine. Both versions got stuck.

Tried the following:

- Removing preferences

- Updated to latest version

- Reinstalling Photoshop

- Keeping Windows up-to-date

Windows 10 19045.4651

[aaronliu369]

Same problem, crashing

[Shane390200842vto]

Hi,

Since this morning, I've been unable to open Photoshop and Illustrator. I don't know the cause of the problem. I tried installing an older version, but I'm still facing the same issue. Photoshop gets stuck while opening, and if luckily Illustrator gets open then it will shows "not responding" or suddenly the application crash. My system has 32GB RAM. Please help me with this.

[Ged_Traynor]

@Shane390200842vto try manually resetting your Photoshop preferences
https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/photoshop/using/preferences.html#Manually
Remember to back up your settings before doing the preference reset
https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/photoshop/using/preset-migration.html

If that doesn't help try the Adobe Cleaner Tool

https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html