Photoshop not opening, process runs in background

[Brandon26030993wb73]

Had no issues for the past 4 years, go into work today and try and open photoshop and nothing happens.

A photoshop background process appears in my task manager and sits there doing nothing. Have uninstalled/reinstalled photoshop and creative cloud and restarted my laptop severall times and the same thing happens. Updated my drivers and even tried switching between game and studio drivers to the same result. Every other adobe application opens fine, just not photoshop..

Even tried going into %appdata% > Local\Adobe\OOBE and deleting the opm.db file, logging out and relaunching creativecloud and again.. nothing. Photoshop refuses to open as anything but a background application???

Went home on my lunch break and booted photoshop 1st try on my home pc.

[Brandon26030993wb73]

I did notice the icon for creative cloud in my taskbar applications tab on the bottom right has this blue arrow on it now as well?

[Brandon26030993wb73]

Laptop is an i7 with 64GB's of memory and a 4070ti graphics card.

[AxelMatt]

Try to reset the preferences to the default settings. Manually removing the preferences files is the most complete method for restoring Photoshop to its default state.

This method ensures all preferences and any user presets which may be causing a problem are not loaded.

Please follow the steps below:

1. Quit Photoshop.
2. Navigate to the preferences folder of Photoshop.
   macOS: Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings
   Windows: Users/[user name]/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop [version]/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings
    
   Note: This folder is hidden by default. To access files in the hidden user Library folder see the appropriate links below.
   MacOS: How to access hidden user library files.
   Windows: Show hidden files and folders in Windows
   
   
3. Move the entire Adobe Photoshop [Version] Settings folder to a safe place on your drive for a back-up of your settings. Then delete this folder.
    
4. Open Photoshop.

Photoshop creates automatically the appropriate settings folder with the default values.

[Brandon26030993wb73]

AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2025\Adobe Photoshop 2025 Settings

Ticked show hidden files but the folder still shows being empty 😞

[Brandon26030993wb73]

Deleted the entire Adobe Photoshop 2025 Settings, tried launching photoshop again. It created a new Adobe Photoshop 2025 Settings folder but still only launched as a background application

[Sameer K]

Hey, @Brandon26030993wb73. I've tagged and responded to another one of your comments here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/photoshop-2025-opens-only-as-a-backgr...

Please try those steps and let me know how it goes here, or on the same thread. 

Thanks!

Sameer K
(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

[Annabell35485946ke3y]

Just encountered this issue today! Did you ever find a solution?

[AllieBPort]

My solution was reinstalling Windows completely. According to the supportmanager of the ICT-company this could happen when windows shut down due to a problem. Some of the data in the program hangs on. 

[Brandon26030993wb73]

In the same boat... tried every solution I've seen suggested for this bug and nothings worked 😕

[Sameer K]

Hey, @Brandon26030993wb73 and @Annabell35485946ke3y. Welcome to the Photoshop Community. This is an old thread. I'll move your comment to a new thread, and I've locked this thread for now.

For now, try these steps to manually recreate the MSVC++ Libraries:

•  In the Creative Cloud app, press CTRL + ALT + T (Win) to launch Creative Cloud Troubleshooter & select 'Close Creative Cloud and related processes' > click on Go.
• Go to 'Add or Remove programs' in Windows search & find all the installations of Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (all years).
  
  
• Uninstall them completely. Even if there is an option to repair them, please uninstall all the existing MSVC++ packages.
• Download a fresh package of installers for MSVC++ from this link: https://adobe.ly/3DkgAVF
• Right-click the downloaded file and select Extract All.
• Reinstall all packages (32bit & 64bit) one by one & then restart the computer once.
  
  

Let me know how it goes from here. Thanks!

Sameer K
(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

[FILIPE BORIN27572617rrtu]

Link for the MSVC++ you sent doesn't open.

[Trevor.Dennis]

The thread is not locked at the moment.

Just to add that I often have the issue with various beta versions.  It tends to clear with a preference reset, but I usually just clear the orphaned process in Task Manager (Windows 11).  I find that other issues lead me to reset preferences with the beta versions maybe once a month or so, so I just wait for one of those situations to come around, and carry on deleting the left behind Photoshop process. 

[Brandon26030993wb73]

•  In the Creative Cloud app, press CTRL + ALT + T (Win) to launch Creative Cloud Troubleshooter & select 'Close Creative Cloud and related processes' > click on Go.

This instantly fixed it thank you! As soon as creative cloud closed my photoshop opened by itself

[Brandon26030993wb73]

Follow up, issue ended up continuing. After closing the photoshop that opened from using CTRL + ALT + T it went back to opening only as a background process. I attempted to uninstall all MSVC++ versions but was unable to uninstall these last 2 (it says a restart is required but still pops up after restarting, same thing happens when trying to install the new versions from here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170)

[Brandon26030993wb73 · Accepted solution]

Finally fixed it by deleting all registry folders titled 'Adobe' in the locations in the registry below and deleted all remaining folders in the program and user folders AFTER using the Creative Cloud Uninstaller & Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool, restarted my computer. Photoshop now opens instantly every time!

Would be nice if Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool and the Creative Cloud Uninstaller cleared all these instead of leaving them lurking in the system for users to have to track down and purge manually if they corrupt.

Manual Registry Cleanup (Use with caution):
Disclaimer: Modifying the registry can cause system instability. Back up your registry before making any changes.

1. Open Registry Editor: Press Win + R, type regedit, and press Enter.

2. Back up the registry: Click File > Export to save a backup of your entire registry.

3. Locate and delete keys:

Navigate to and carefully delete any remaining Photoshop-related keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Adobe\\Photoshop
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Adobe\\Photoshop

4. Search for and delete any other specific registry keys related to Photoshop.

5. Restart your computer: to ensure all changes are applied.

6. Clean up leftover folders: in the AppData directories to remove settings and caches.
`C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\`
`C:\Users\[Your Username]\AppData\Local\Adobe\`

7. Install a fresh copy of Creative Cloud and install/run photoshop

8. Sit back, drink a beer and try and forget the hours of troubleshooting you just went through

[affectionate_brain7243]

I tried resetting Photoshop preferences, swapping GPU drivers and Photoshop versions, and even reinstalling several times — nothing worked.

But after doing the registry cleanup you mentioned, the slow startup issue disappeared. Thank you so much!

[Bruce AB]

When I launch Photoshop, it starts as a background process and 4 to 5 minutes later it will suddenly start running in the foreground. During that 4 to 5 minute delay there is no splash screen or anything else that indicates what is happening. As many times as you click to start Photoshop, a separate Photoshop task will begin running in the background. After about 5 minutes, when the first Photoshop task starts running in the foreground, the second task either stays in the background or it disappears (it seems to do either unpredictably). Once running in the foreground it seems to stay in the foreground 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.

Related problem 1: 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 there is this same mysterious 4 - 5 minute delay whether starting 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).

Related problem 2: There is another problem where I finally load a .nef file into Photoshop (ie am editing in ACR), then while in ACR I click on "open" to return back to Photoshop. I briefly see the Photoshop workspace screen, then it goes back to ACR. If I click "open" a second time, I go back to Photoshop and it may stay there, but at that point I have two images under separate tabs. (I hope this description is understandable).

This problem does not seem to affect Lightroom, Bridge, Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop, nor any unrelated app whether Adobe or non-Adobe.

I have "fixed" this problem twice, only to have it come back a week or two later. 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 a week.

One common suggestion is to reset all preferences back to the defaults. I have tried that and it does not seem to fix the any of the problems described above.

This may be happening only with the Window version. I am running Win 11 w/all updates, both PS 26.10 and now 26.11.

[Aleke]

Hi @Bruce AB, thanks so much for reaching out and for all the detailed info!
To help us take a closer look, could you share your System Info with us? You can find it in Photoshop by going to Help > System Info. Just copy the details into a text file and attach it to your reply, or feel free to share it via Google Drive, WeTransfer, or any other file-sharing service you prefer.
Really appreciate it! 
Alek

[Bruce AB]

Hi @Aleke, thanks for looking at this problem. This is embarrassing but this morning Photoshop is working normally. This has happened in the past, my hope of course is that it doesn't revert back to what it was doing, and if it does I will let you know with a reply here.

I can get a dump of system info only when Photoshop is running in the foreground. I've attached two: one from 9/17/2025 when this problem first started, and another from today 9/30/2025 when the problem is not showing itself.

[Bruce AB]

@Aleke, itwas back doing the 4-minute delay again this evening. I grapped the two screenshots below:

[Aleke]

Hi @Bruce AB, I'm really sorry to hear you're still running into this issue.
It sounds like it's not happening consistently, which definitely makes it trickier to track down. When it does occur, do you see the Photoshop splash screen at all? If so, does it seem to freeze at a particular point?
One thing that might help is trying the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool, it can fix problems with installations that aren’t behaving quite right.
Let me know what you find, and we’ll keep digging into it together.
Thanks,
Alek

[Bruce AB]

Thanks for your interest in my problem, @Aleke! No splash screen. I see my desktop and when I start Photoshop I see a small "busy"spinning wheel on top of the desktop for a short while, then the spinning wheel disappears and back normal as though nothinghad happened. While waiting out the 4 minutes I can start a different app and it starts and runs normally. Photoshop shows in the Windows task manager as a background process, then 4 minutes later the PS workspace screen opens and task manager shows Photoshop as an "App", ie running in the foreground. I agree that it is increasingly apparent that it is an intermittent problem -- almost impossible to debug. There has to be a pattern, though, and I continue to search for clues. 

[James289100626l10]

Replying to say that the exact same thing is happening to me as well. Photoshop stays as a background process for many minutes, then eventually opens. Started happening many months ago on my Windows machine. Troubleshot for hours and finally found someone who mentioned editing some deep Adobe system files. Of course I can't recall exacly what I did so I'm of no help there. Seems like the latest update may have cleared/reset those files and I'm back to waiting. Following along on this journey.

[Bruce AB]

As with you, I've spent many hours trying to figure this problem out. On my system it is intermittent, and for that reason there are no steps I can provide to duplicate the problem on another system. Something is making something unstable. I'm not sure Adobe will solve this one, perhaps not even try, even though I do believe it to be a Photoshop problem. In the meantime, I take a lot of 5 minute coffee breaks waiting for Photoshop or my photo to load --a time-consuming process but the caffeine does make the wait go better.