Photoshop 2020 (21.0.3) taking forever to open.

[Zuntaras]

In short, when I open PS2020 it can take up to five minutes. It seems to get stuck on the "initializing" screen for the longest. Everything has internet acess, I have reinstalled, I have even tried it with all my plug-ins deleted. No effect. I don't believe it's my system because 2019 works fine still. I would appreciate any help because waiting for 2020 to open is destroying my work flow. Thanks. 🙂  P.S. - on Windows 10 here.

[D Fosse]

Take a closer look at the splash screen where it stalls. It lists the submodules as they load, so that should give you a clue where the problem is.

[Zuntaras]

Oh it is definetly on "Initializing" like I said. Comes to a dead stop there.

[D Fosse]

It loads so fast here that I have trouble recording a screenshot before it's gone - so I can't see the steps it goes through. But it just says "Initializing" here, nothing more?

[Zuntaras]

Ok, wanted to get a screen shot of my own. 🙂 My screen just says "Initiallizng" without the "Dial".  Wonder if that's something? And that's where it always gets stuck.

[margaretw65488533]

I was hoping I'd finally find a solution to this issue here, but no luck.  My splashscreen stalls out at Reading Preferences.  I reset the preferences, and it still hangs up there.  It still takes 5 minutes to load, and now, I have to go back in and recreate my preferences.  That was a bit of a waste of time and energy.  Any other tips you can give me?  Thank you for any help at all.

[Zuntaras]

Hi. Wanted to wait for an update but the problem remains unchanged.  If anything, it takes a little longer since update. Really crippling. I have been occasionally using Gimp instead just to save time. Any help would still be appreciated.

[TomChicago2011]

Have had the same problem for weeks and none of the forums or my other searches online have really fixed this.  The only thing that works for me is to launch Photoshop 2020 as an Administrator.  Then it starts just fine. Unfortunately, the way my employer has configured our machines, I have to go through 3 extra prompts to load something as an Adminstrator, but it's a heck of a lot faster than waiting 4 or 5 minutes for Photoshop 2020 to load.  In the one thread I found where someone discovered that running as an Administrator worked, they were getting a complete time out and an error message indicating it was file permissions issue.  The person answering her thread suggested she go to the help on which folders PhotoShop needs access to.  I never got the permissions mesage and mine will eventually load as a non-Administrator, but went through Adobe's help article on required permissions and made sure that I as a regular user on my PC had access to those folders, but that didn't help.  Still need to run as an Administror.  Something happened with one of the Photoshop 2020 updates that created this problem. Sure wish Adobe would figure it out for us and fix it. Across multiple threads on the internet hundreds of people are having this problem.