Photoshop 2019 and 2020 Intermittently Freezing

[c_l_z]

I have been having a problem with Photoshop where it will intermittently freeze. The rest of my computer will be running fine. The program itself will just become unresponsive. Windows 10 does not register it as unresponsive though - as the unresponsive tag is not in task manager (which is the only way to close the app). The problem appears to occur shortly after swapping between brushes or changing the size of a brush - however, that may be correlation rather than causation as I'm swapping brushes constantly while painting. 

My tablet has up to date drivers and the problem occurred in both current and previous versions of Photoshop. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling both PS and the tablet drivers. I also enabled "Legacy Compositing" - though I haven't had a chance to test out the program since enabling this to see if it helps.

I am losing a lot of time and effort. This last time, I had just spent an hour sorting and creating new brushes. When the program froze, I was forced to close it out and ended up losing all of my work. I will have to start again from scratch. Please help!

I am running Windows 10 Home Edition with the latest updates.

Photoshop is a freshly installed version of the latest release (v21.0.1)

Tablet is a Wacom Intuos Pro with freshly installed, up-to-date drivers.

Edit: To note - the program opens fine. New projects can be created fine. I can work without lag or error for hours. Then, randomly, without warning, it will freeze. The screen will simply stop responding. No hover effects will apply. The app cannot be minimized or maximized. Right clicking the task bar and selecting "Close Program" has no effect. 

[Akash Sharma]

Hi there,

Sorry that Phtooshop 21.0.1 is freezing randomly on your computer running Windows 10.

It sounds like an issue with useR  account permissions at administrative level.

Could you please create a new administrative user account(Windows) and see if the issue still persists in it? Refer the below article to know how to create a new user account/root account: https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4026923/windows-10-create-a-local-user-or-administrator-acc...

Thanks,

Akash

[c_l_z]

How do you gather that this is an account permissions problem from the above post. Just curious. I will try out your troubleshooting suggestion asap.

[c_l_z]

I tried the method you suggested. It, like before, worked normally for a while then froze without any specific reason.

Edit: the link you provided has some characters on the end which make the url not viable. If you remove them you can access the page.

[Akash Sharma]

Sorry that the issue still persists. Here's the link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/4026923/windows-10-create-a-local-user-or-administrator-acc...

Let us know if the problem still happens in the new user account.

~Akash

[c_l_z]

As I wrote above, I was able to get the link to work. I was able to try the new user account. It did not solve the problem.

[c_l_z]

As I wrote above, I was able to get the link to work. I was able to try the new user account. It did not solve the problem.

[seanwickett]

I am currently dealing with this too. It's been going on for a while.

I don't know the frequency with which it happens but it might be linked to background saving. That's my only guess. Sometimes it seems to happen close together (within 10min) sometimes not.

But it doesn't matter how many docs i have open. I've had just one open and it occurs. I've tried every solution I can from the boards here, but it's still occuring, both on my work machine (Win10Pro, 32GB RAM, 64Bit, i7 3.7GHz) and my home computer (Macbook Pro 10.14). Other apps run fine, it's just PS.

Adobe, please fix this.... make it stop. Breaks my flow....

[seanwickett]

On my MacBook Pro, when PS freezes, I get the spinning beach ball and Activity Monitor shows me that PS's %CPU spiked to 348% during the freeze then in about a minute, drops down to 94.6% and PS returns to normal. 

[seanwickett]

Ok, so I timed it.

Approximately every 5min PS freezes for about 35 seconds. 
My first thought was the background saving of the recovery file. I checked and it was set to 5min. I changed it to 10min and yet it continued to freeze every 5 min. 
I restarted PS and lo and behold, it started freezing every 10min. 
So for now I'm turning off file recovery until a fix is issued. This seems to have been broken in an update. 

[NeilRFord]

Exactly the problem I've been having lately, I'd be very interested in a solution, it's very irritating!