Photoshop does not open at all

[Ana27967077i187]

I'm getting a strange error. On Friday, I used Photoshop normally, but today, when I tried to open it, it didn't work. When I clicked the shortcut, it didn't show the home screen, and nothing else happened. When I accessed the Task Manager, it showed that the EXE file was open, but it wouldn't load.

I've restarted, checked for pending updates (there aren't), and as a last resort, I deleted Photoshop and reinstalled it, but nothing changed. I don't know what else to do to fix this error. I'm working in an windows, and his updates are ok.

[Aleke]

Hi @Ana27967077i187, welcome to the community! Sorry to hear you're having trouble with Photoshop.
When you get a chance, could you try resetting your Photoshop preferences? Sometimes corrupted preferences can cause issues, and they can stick around even after a reinstall. Since the app isn’t starting, you’ll need to use the manual method for this one.
Let me know how it goes, I’m here to help!
Alek

[Ana27967077i187]

Thanks @Aleke ,  I was able to open Photoshop now. I don't know if this helps other users, but I had more than one preset folder in Roaming, and I was only able to get the program to open after deleting the presets from all the old versions and restarting my computer. 

[Bruce AB]

Please leave a reply here if the problem comes back later, as has been the problem for me. Thanks.

[Bruce AB]

@Aleke, your steps 1 - 4 above appear to only produce a copy of the preferences in another location. Should I also delete the settings in the original folder? I followed the steps except I renamed the existing folder and then created a new empty folder with the old name. The preferences were the defaults when PS finally opened, but it did not fix the problem of PS starting and staying in the background for about 5 minutes.

[Bruce AB]

I'm having what is probably the same problem. If you wait 5 minutes, Photoshop will suddenly start working. I have "fixed" this problem twice, only to have it come back a week or two later. This may be happening only with the Window version, Very frustrating. This problem does not seem to affect Lightroom, Bridge, Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop, nor any unrelated app whether Adobe or non-Adobe. As many times as you click to start Photoshop, a separate Photoshop task will begin running in the background. After about 5 minutes, the first Photoshop task will be moved to the foreground -- the second task either stays in the background or it disappears (it seems to do either unpredictably). Once running in the foreground, all seems to be okay until I exit PS. Then, to start PS in foreground again it's another 5 minute wait even if I power down/up the system, or restart Windows 11, or just start PS without doing either first. Win 11 w/all updates, both PS 26.10 and now 26.11.

ADDITIONAL INFO: Once Photoshop is running in the foreground, if I load an image into PS by navigating File / Open, the image will open right away. However, if I run Windows Explorer (or any other app such as ViewNX), find the file, right click and select "Open with Photoshop" it takes 4 - 5 minutes for it to open. So apparently the same mysterious 4 - 5 minute delay whether opening Photoshop or opening an image file into PS from another app (it does not seem to matter if image file is .nef, .psd, .jpg, etc).

Two fixes I have tried with temporary success: 1) I updated my graphics driver (Nvidia GeForce RTX 30360 Ti) to the laterst version 2) I uninstalled Photoshop, went into the registry keys and deleted every key related to Photoshop, then reinstalled Photoshop. Try #2 seemed to last the longest, about two weeks.