installation of Ps 24.1 does not inherit previous versions settings

[jfier]

Ps 24.1

Desktop, Windows 10 Pro 22H2

Installed Ps 24.1 using Creative Cloud app. Selected "Import previous settings and preferences" and deselected "Remove old versions." Opened Ps 24.1, expected inital view to show thumbnails of recently opened files; instead the view was blank. Created a new document and found that my custom workspaces were not available, menu color customizations were not there, etc.; i.e., my previous setup had not been migrated. My UXP plugins were available under the Plugins menu. Closed Ps 24.1. Re-opened Ps 24.1. Hadn't saved document from last time, so no recent documents were available. Created a new one. Now my UXP plugins were no longer available. The 3 entries under the Plugins menu (Plugins Panel, Browse Plugins.., Manage Plugins, etc.) were all greyed out and my UXP plugins were no longer listed there, so there is no way to access them or any other UXP plugins. This is the state Ps 24.1 is in on all subsequent opens.

Tried the same thing on my Surface Pro 5 laptop (Windows Pro 10 21H1), and Ps 24.1 installed perfectly. Upon opening it the initial view showed all my recently opened files. All my customizations and UXP plugins were there as expected and functioning correctly.

So this is an issue with my Desktop computer. Other than the Windows 10 Pro 22H2 vs. 21H1 version difference, a significant difference between the two is that the laptop only has a C: drive, but the Desktop has apps installed on C: and data (including my AppData directory, where the UXP plugins get stored F:\\Users\Jeff\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\UXP\Plugins\External) on the F: drive.

I have attached the UXPlogs from the F:\\Users\Jeff\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Photoshop 2023\Logs directory for the first and second opening of Ps 24.1 in case they are of any use. What other files can I provide to help track down why Ps 24.1 isn't installing and running correctly on the Desktop computer?

[CoryShubert]

Hi @jfier sorry to hear this.

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. 

It may help if we could see your Photoshop System Info. Launch Photoshop, and select Help >System Info...and copy/paste the text in a reply.  

Thank you,

Cory

[jfier]

Hi, Cory. Thanks for your reply. I tried restoring my preferences two ways:

• First, before Ps 2023 was installed, I used the manual method to restore my Ps 2023 preferences to default. I then installed Ps 2023. I saw the same behavior as originally reported: In the initial launch, everything looked fine. Ps opened into its usual initial screen, but, of course, there were no recently opened files to show. In addition, the Plugins menu had all my plugins available. I quit and relauched. Now, the normal initial screen did not come up and Ps 2023 looks like it is viewing an empty document. The plugins menu only has the first 3 items, and all of them are greyed out.
• Second Way: After Ps 2023 was installed and I had opened and closed it once, I used the manual method to restore my Ps 2023 preferences to default. In the next launch I saw the same behavior as originally reported as as described above.

So, running from a default state did not solve the problem.

I collected the System Info from several launches: 3 from the first method and 2 from the second method. I don't see a way to upload them from this reply, so here is a link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/r9k5k1piuu9bzw5cnn04w/h?dl=0&rlkey=nn27bhwfodwwn9q5vzskf6vfx

I hope the file names will make it clear where the System Info came from.

Thanks for your help.

--Jeff

[kevin stohlmeyer]

I've never had a system where the application is not on the same hard drive as the system resources. That could be the root cause of the issue. Photoshop is looking for the standard location for system files and you have them on your F drive, not the installed C drive.

[jfier]

That is true. I Put %AppData% on my F: drive since some applications store user data there. For example, Thunderbird's user profile, which contains all the email messages, gets stored there. I wanted those on my "data" drive which I back up daily.

This is a directory that Windows has built-in support for relocating (via the Location tab in Properties). If I can find no other solution, I will eventually experiment by moving %AppData% back to the C: drive to see if Ps 2023 installs and runs correctly with that change. But that is pretty major surgery on my PC and I am going to hold off on that until I have ample time available to deal with any other issues moving that directory might cause.

[jfier · Accepted solution]

After working with Adobe Customer Support, I finally have a definitive answer as to why Ps 24 doesn't work correctly on my computer: Ps 24 requires that its preferences (%AppData%\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2023\Adobe Photoshop 2023 Settings) be on the C: drive. This wasn't the case for previous versions of Ps, but it is now for Ps 24.

We were able to demonstrate this by creating a new user profile with %AppData% on the C: drive. We then installed Ps 24 for that user and Ps 24 worked as expected. We then moved %AppData% to another drive (using the Location tab in the Properties panel for the Roaming directory), reinstalled Ps 24, and now the Home screen was inaccessible (House symbol in upper left is greyed out) and the Plugins Menu items were greyed out, so no access to my plugins.

As an experiment, I recreated the new user account with %AppData% moved to another drive, then created a symbolic link (mklink /d, but also tried a junction via mklink /j) from the C: drive location of Roaming to its location on the other drive. This should force any program references to that directory to find the needed data on the other drive. Even with this, Ps 24 fails to work correctly, which puzzles me since there should be no way Ps 24 can fail to find its preferences.

Adobe Customer Support told me this is the way it is for Ps 24 and Engineering has no plans to fix it. I consider it a bug; apparently they do not.

With no other options, I have now moved the 107 GB of %AppData% back to my C: drive and now Ps 24 works for me (although making that move broke a lot of things that I am in the process of fixing).

I hope this information is useful for others who have moved their user data off C: to another drive (see, for example, https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1964-move-users-folder-location-windows-10-a.html) and found that Ps 24 (and presumably later versions) does not work correctly.

[D Fosse]

I Put %AppData% on my F: drive since some applications store user data there

By @jfier

Just to be clear for everybody else reading this:

All applications store all user data/settings/preferences there. That is your user account, and applications expect the user account to be on the system drive.

While I don't doubt that it's possible to move your user account off the system drive, it's really hard to see why you would want to do that. Backup was mentioned, but you can backup anything regardless of where it is.

Most applications that put really large folders in the user account, allow those specific folders to be relocated if space is an issue. Examples are Bridge and Premiere Pro caches, or Lightroom catalog. 

To me, this sounds like a highly specialized configuration for highly specialized purposes, and generally asking for trouble.