64 crashes within 2 hours (Photoshop)

[Red Point]

I would like someone from Adobe technical team to get in touch with me. I had multiple deadlines yesterday and missed one of them because Photoshop crashed 64 times within a few hours of working. Since I was under a stressfull situation, I did'nt have time to troubleshoot and go through a 50 point checklist of possible issues. 

I need realiable software, as I am working in a commercial and often very stressful situation. Yesterday was really the climax and accumulation of all the bad stability experiences I have had with Adobe. Not only did I have Photoshop crash mutiple times, but also my fonts in Illustrator stopped syncing and my project did not have any more fonts (I have posted elsewhere regarding this issue). 

I have the newest driver for my NVIDIA GPU installed. I have the newest Windows 11 with all recent updates. I trtied opening PS with and without admin priviliedges (with admin privis drag and drop stops working). I have worked with beta and normal app. Both equally crash. When I open the app and dont do anything for 30 seconds, it crashes already. 

Here is my setup: 

Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
System: X570 AORUS ULTRA
Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor, 3401 Mhz, 16 Core(s), 32 Logical Pro.
Memory (RAM): 64,0 GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti
GPU Memory: 8 GB
GPU Driver version: NVIDIA 31.0.15.3598

Any ideas?

[D Fosse]

I'd consider a BIOS update.

It's just statistics that Ryzen systems seem curiously over-represented in problems like this (aside from dual-GPU laptops, a separate problem). I have no idea what might be the underlying cause, but in all likelihood it's GPU-related. But several people have said that a BIOS update corrected it.

I really think the Adobe engineers should take a closer look at these Ryzen crashes. But to do that, they need the crash reports. So do submit them, every time.

Other than that, make sure you're running the Studio driver, not the Game Ready driver. Reinstall the driver, check "clean install", and uncheck all the other components in the driver package. You don't need any of it. Install only the base driver. Someone else the other day resolved similar problems by uninstalling "GeForce Experience" or whatever they call it.

[Red Point]

I updated my bios in March to version "F37b - Checksum 5C02" (driver release date March 23, 2023). There is no more recent driver version.

I am running the most recent Nvidia Studio Driver Version: 535.98 (release date: 05/30/2023). There is no more recent driver version. 

I have submitted around 20 of my 64 crashes to Adobe yesterday. Will keep doing it. 

Should I maybe downgrade my bios driver / GPU driver? 

[TheDigitalDog]

Do you want to go back to previous versions?
In Adobe Creative Cloud, select the product you wish to roll back, click on the three dots and select "Other Versions".

[Red Point]

Thank you, but I was refering to the bios and / or GPU driver. I don't want to downgrade, but right now I would do anything to get Photoshop working. I cannot do my job, Photoshop crashes every 5 minutes. My work keeps piling up. 

Seems like right know its all just a guessing game. 

[J E L]

@Red Point, to add another suggestion, do you have the new Photoshop Beta downloaded on the same system? I also had about 5 crashes in a row this morning while doing very simple tasks. I uninstalled Beta, and it has been working perfectly for the last hour without any crashes. Let us know if that might apply to your situation.

[Red Point]

You mean while you had Beta installed (but not running), regular Photoshop would crash? But when you uninstall Beta, it stops crashing? Is that correct? I can try that...

[J E L]

@Red Point, yes, exactly. I had the latest Beta installed, and it was not launched or running. I was working in Photoshop (24.5.0 Release) on Windows 10, at least 5 crashes in a row for no other reason I could determine. I closed Photoshop (well, it crashed and closed itself, lol), uninstalled Beta from the Creative Cloud Desktop app, and launched Photoshop. No problems with crashing so far! Hope it works for you, too.

[Red Point]

So I checked my Windows 11 Event Viewer to see if there was a Photoshop crash event. There are many. All of them have a reference to "nvdxdlkernels.dll", which seems to be AMD display driver related. 

C:\WINDOWS\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispsi.inf_amd64_777742171a918a50\nvdxdlkernels.dll

Any idea for a workaround?

PS: I also keep seeing Adobe "CEPHtmlEngine.exe" failures (my old friend from Adobe telemetry) ...  I also just performed the GPU Compatibility check within Photoshop. It's all green and says "Your graphics processor is compatible". I reported the issue directly to nvidia (driverfeedback)...

[D Fosse]

It does happen that bad driver versions get released. There was one about a year ago.

FWIW, I'm using 531.61 on an RTX 3060, dead stable. In fact, I haven't seen a crash in years, but I don't update the driver very often, perhaps every 6 months or so. They have all worked well, so I tend to forget.

[Red Point]

Intel or AMD?

[D Fosse]

Intel here (i7-11700K)

[Red Point · Accepted solution]

Ok, so my issue with the crashes seems to be in combination with an AMD chipset. 

I did some troubleshooting yesterday and one of the settings I changed seems to have stopped the crashes for now. All works fine on my regular PS installation for now. Amazing how great it feels to be able to work again (;  

Here is what I did:
Photoshop > Preferences > Image Processing > (Switched all dropdowns to "More stable"). 

I do still get occasional crashes on the beta version using the new AI "remove tool", but I haven't made the above change in my beta preferences, so I will still have to do some more testing. 

[J E L]

@Red Point, great to hear you are back in business! Thanks for coming on to let us know. I'm going to try reinstalling the Beta soon to see if regular Photoshop is still crashing.