Photoshop crashes when trying to open a PNG file

[Zetland]

Hello, when I open Photoshop and then try to open a PNG file, a pop-up appears saying "Sorry, an error occurred" and then the program shuts down. Do you know what might be causing this and how I might fix it? It's made the program useless to me.

Thank you

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Please read this (in particular the section titled "Supply pertinent information for more timely and effective answers”):

https://community.adobe.com/t5/using-the-community/community-how-to-guide-tips-amp-best-practices/td...

What have you done for all-purpose trouble-shooting so far?
Restoring Preferences after making sure all customized presets like Actions, Patterns, Brushes etc. have been saved might be a good starting point:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/basic-trouble-shooting-steps.html

[Zetland]

I'm trying to what in particular I can add. I suppose one useful note is that the program used to work fine for me, but hasn't for a few months, which may have coincided with me downsizing my pagefile.sys file (from something huge like 11GB to 6.3GB). Apparently, as my computer only has 4GB of RAM, the old pagefile.sys was needlessly large anyway though.

I've also reinstalled PS, so I've got the latest version, and I'm running it on Windows 10. Does this help?

[c.pfaffenbichler]

»Does this help?«

You did not even provide the version numbers of OS and Photoshop – »latest version« is not useful. 

Have you reset the Preferences yet? 

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

[Zetland]

Okay, so my Photoshop version number is 22.3.0.49.

As for Windows, my version is 2004, the edition is Windows 10 Home and the OS build is 19041.867. Hope that's what you were looking for.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Have you reset the Preferences via keyboard shortcut yet? 

Edit: I just saw your subsquent post … 

[Zetland]

I've also reset my Preferences but it hasn't changed anything.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Does the issue arise only with pngs or with all image files? 

[Zetland]

Actually, I converted the image to a JPEG instead and it opened alright, but then when I started using the clone stamp on the image, it suddenly had to shut down after 5 minutes. Does that help your thinking here? It also suggested this FAQ webpage:

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html#Unsupportedgraphicscards

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Does turning off »Use Graphics Processor« in the Performance Preferences (Photoshop > Preferences > Performance > Graphic Processor Settings) and restarting Photoshop have any bearing on the issue? 

[Zetland]

Yeah, unfortunately, it tells me that an error has occurred whenever I try to change any of the preferences. I've disabled the graphics under Device Manager though and that doesn't work...

[Zetland]

Oh, also, when I try to change things via Edit > Preferences > Performance, I get the error message "Could not complete the Performance command because of a program error".