All keyboard shortcuts suddenly stopped working on Photoshop 23.3.2

[Farodyne]

First of all, some version details.

OS: Windows 11 Pro with all driver updates applied.

Photoshop: Version 23.3.2.

Problem description:

I have been a Photoshop user for many, many years (on a hobby level) and enjoy spending some time in Photoshop. Today, straight out of the blue, as I was working on an image, all the keyboard shortcuts suddenly stopped working. With "all", I mean all. I cannot use combined shortscuts like Ctrl + N or Ctrl +S and I cannot use single ones like B for the brush tool and so on. Interestingly enough, all shortcuts work just find in Bridge and in Camera Raw, so the problem is isolated to Photoshop only. 

When analysing the information in Edit -> Keyboard shortcuts and menues, I do see that the shortcuts are defined and present, but if I attempt to override an existing one with a new value, while attempting to enter a new one, it's like the keyboard is dead. 

I have spent quite some time on Google and of course tried the classical stuff to make sure I don't have Caps Lock on or an incorrect keyboard mapping, but to no avail. I have also tried Edit -> Preferences -> General and Reset Preferences on Quit, but this doesn't help either. I have tried multiple times to uninstall all my Adobe Products, including Adobe Creative Cloud, removing all adobe directories/files from disk to then reinstall everything again, but the problem still remains.

In pure desperation I created a completely new Windows 11 and attempted to run Photoshop from there, and that does the trick, so apparently some preference for my other user has gotten corrupted or stuck at a level that is beyond me. Jumping between my two Windows accounts is not optimal for obvious reasons, so I am currently at a level where I simply wish to understand what on earth could have triggered this very irritating problem. Especially if it for some reason would decide to resurface again in the future. 

Has anybody here experience anything similar?

Any help/ideas would be highly appreciated.

Best regards.

[TheDigitalDog]

Is Photoshop the only application where no KBSs work? 

[Farodyne]

Hi TheDigitalDog,

Yes. As you can see in my original text, the shortcuts work just fine in for example Bridge. If I type Ctrl + N while inside Bridge, I get a new window as expected. If I do the same while inside Photoshop, nothing happens. And absolutely nothing happens with any shortcut in Photoshop, which is what confuses me so much. Never had anything like this happen to me before.

[TheDigitalDog]

If resetting preferences didn't work, consider using Adobe Creative Cloud to uninstall Photoshop (and when asked preference). Then install it again from ACC. If that still doesn't work, you can revert to an older version, again using ACC. Click on the... and select “other version”. Better?

[CShubert]

Hi @Farodyne, 

Let's make sure we're in a default state and there are no stale settings somewhere: 

Restore your preferences using this manual method:  

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html#Manually  

Does it work correctly? 

If that doesn't solve it, you can quit Photoshop and put the Settings folder back. 

If it does solve the problem, I would like to get the folder of settings to try and figure out what is bad with them. 

Thank you,

[Farodyne · Accepted solution]

Hello again.

I would like to thank all of you who provided such quick responses for things I could try out. That makes this forum really valuable.

I did try everything you all suggested and uninstalled all the Adobe products from my machine, whiping out anything that looked like an Adobe or Photoshop directory. Also tried older versions of Photoshop, but it did not help. In complete desperation after keeping on searching I eventually found this thread.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/very-strange-shortcut-keyboard-proble...

In it there was a suggestion to reinstall the already installed Windows language packs. Not that it helps me understand why or how, but that eventually made the trick and now Photoshop works as expected. 

Extremely strange problem, to be honest. Anyhow, I am now a happier guy. 😃 

Thanks once more for your feedback.