Photoshop won't start

[Marina34854853qnml]

Photoshop stopped launching for no apparent reason. The launch window with the pelican appears. I can hear the computer running, but Photoshop does not open. It is also not listed in the Task Manager. I tried completely uninstalling Creative Cloud and Photoshop. I tried installing earlier versions. But nothing happens. Windows 11 is fully updated. Any ideas?

[AxelMatt]

In a first step try to reset the preferences of Photoshop using the steps described here:

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

It's recommended to backup your settings before resetting the preferences.

See here:  https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html#backup-photoshop-preferences

Which version of Photoshop do you use?

What has been change on your system before the error occured?

Is your system up-to-date? Do you have installed all recent updates and patches for the operating system and the device drivers, especially the graphic driver. If you have a NVidia graphic card installed, make sure that you are using the recent Studio version of the driver, not the Game Ready version.

[Marina34854853qnml]

Thank you for your reply! resetting photoshop settings during startup did not help. photoshop still won't start. although sometimes I see the photoshop process in the task manager as active. Surprisingly, the lightroom runs without problems. I updated the graphics card and all Windows settings, but it also did not have the desired effect. I haven't tried changing the user yet and installing photoshop there. maybe this will be the next step.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

@Marina34854853qnml before you change users, try right-clicking on the Photoshop exe and choose "run as administrator"

[Marina34854853qnml]

Thanks a lot for the feedback. running as an administrator didn't work either

[AxelMatt]

We need more infos about your system. Since Photoshop doesn't run please goto to Lightroom and provide a copy of your 'System Info'. This can be get from the LrC Help > System Info menu item. There's a copy button in the System Info dialog. Press this button and paste the info into your next forum post.

Please check also the Windows Log if you find appropriate entries about Photoshop.

What Is the Windows Event Viewer, and How Can I Use It?

[Marina34854853qnml]

Lightroom version: 8.5.1 x64 [ 20250821-1548-c6398d5 ] (Aug 21 2025)
NGL version: 1.41.0.11
WF version: 7.4 a9dfbad
VF version: 1.0.154
HIL version: 40501
CAI version: c2pa-c/0.6.0 c2pa-rs/0.46.0
PH version: 5.2.3

Operating system: Windows 11
OS version: Windows 11 Home (2009)
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Computer model: GIGABYTE AORUS 5 SE / 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H
Logical processor count: 20
Processor speed: 2.6 GHz
Available physical memory for Lightroom: 40684.5 MB
Actual memory used by Lightroom: 621.4 MB (1.5%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 606.5 MB
Cache size: 0.0 MB

Camera Raw internal version: 17.5 [ 2318 ]
Maximum number of threads used by Camera Raw: 11
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2, AVX, AVX2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 0 MB / 18294 MB (0%)

Display: 1920x1080
System DPI setting: 96 dots per inch
Dark mode: No
Composition on PC enabled: Yes
Input types: Multitouch function: No, built-in touch screen: No, built-in pen: No, external touch screen: No, external pen: No, keyboard: No

Graphics processor information: DirectX: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU (31.0.15.1661) - 8 GB
Graphics processor information: loaded: Yes, supported: Yes, computing resources: Yes, initialization: I4_GPU4, hardware: success, software: success, al: Yes, dl: No
OS media support: true

Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom CC
Settings folder: C:\Users\dlial\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom CC
Library folder: C:\Users\dlial\AppData\Local\Adobe\Lightroom CC\Data4

[Marina34854853qnml · Accepted solution]

It seems the problem has been solved! I was looking for information about this error in their event log. I found instructions that say that you need to download driver updates, for example, from the video card website. I did it and photoshop opened! Thanks a lot to everyone for the comments here