Photoshop CC: Can't open any files, fails silently

And I cleared my preferences using control-shift-alt on Photoshop start-up, so the program doesn't crash anymore... still won't open files, though.

I had tried adjusting those preferences previously, right? So I just did what you said, and now it's back to crashing every time I start Photoshop. A pop-up says "Adobe Photoshop CC 2017 has stopped working. Please close the program" and then my only option is close.

Oh, and as for what I'm seeing -- before I did this and it went back to crashing, Photoshop opens and looks normal. I have normal dialogue boxes to open file (going through Explorer, etc.) and then select it as usual. Then instead of a window opening in PS with the file... nothing happens.

Dragging a file into the PS workspace doesn't work either, nor does "right click > open with > Photoshop" over in Explorer.

Howdy Jenny,

Clearing your preferences should have reset your checkboxes.  My suggestion above was to put them back into a state where we can rule out any internet lag.

The pop-up has me thinking that something in your configuration is incorrect.  Are you running any third-party plugins?  What other applications do you have running?  You have admin rights over the machine, correct?  And, to be certain, what OS version are you running?  Oh, yeah, and is there a reason you're running 2017 instead of the latest release?  

Thanks,
David

They were originally unchecked and I checked both (my mistake, sorry! I see now I should have checked only the one) And now I haven't been able to clear the preferences again to fix that, even with the key combo to do so -- it asks me for admin privileges now, though it didn't before.

Unfortunately, I don't have administrative privileges. I am not running any third-party plugins. This is Windows 10. I don't know why, this is the version our IT person installed before shrugging and closing the ticket....

Edited to add: Oh, and also I tried all this with every other program closed.

OH and I finally got it to clear preferences again! I made sure the checkboxes fit what you said above this time, and it's still crashing every time I restart...

I think I fixed my own problem. Purged the cache in Camera Raw Preferences and now it works fine!

Howdy Keith,

Do you get any dialog when PS fails to open a file?  Are you getting any crash notifications or logs?  Could you take and post screenshots?  Is this a new installation or did you have Photoshop on this machine before?  

Thanks,
David

Hi David,  I'm afraid not. No dialog when PS fails to open a file. I just get a blank window and nothing happens. Everything goes greyed out and I have to force quit PS. It did open a PNG image, when I had just installed it, for about 2 mins and then froze. I had PS on the machine already and this was an update. When the problem started I uninstalled PS and did a reinstall just to see if that would work but nope. K

Howdy Keith,

Hmmm, your scenario is slightly different than Jenny's -- her machine is new.  Have you tried trashing your font cache?  That could have become corrupted during the upgrade.  You can find full steps here: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/troubleshoot-fonts-photoshop.html .  Also, how is your internet connection on this new machine?  It sounds like you may have either a) a dialog displayed that you're not seeing (maybe it's being displayed beneath your open windows?) or b) your machine is trying to download something and either failing or hanging.  What happens when you try to create a new document from scratch?  And I'm assuming that you changed your preferences already, as I mentioned to Jenny, correct?

Let me know,
Thanks,
David

Going to run through everything tomorrow when Im back in front of the PC. I had searched for an article at the time and couldnt see anything relevant but now that I've found this thread, Im pretty confident I'll have it sorted tomorrow. I'll log each step as I go. Thanks. Keith

Awesome!  Thanks.  I'd love to get to the bottom of this and figure out what strangeness is trigger the issue.

David

Hi Nik,

Are you still having this problem?  Have you tried clearing your preferences?  When you click File > Open and select a valid PSD within Photoshop, what happens?

If you want, I'm happy to set up a web-hosted screenshare to help you get to the bottom of this.

Thanks,
David

Howdy Jennifer,

Have you tried clearing your preferences?  What happens when you try to open a JPG or GIF with Photoshop?  TIFF or PDF?

Thanks,
David

Howdy Glenda,

That sounds like you've run out of hard drive space after the installation.  If you upgraded for a different version number, we don't remove it, so you'll have two copies on your system (plus the installer) and that's very likely to make you run out of space.

Hope that helps,
David

Hi Teych,

So, I have a pretty strong suspicion that there's something else going on with your system, particularly if CTRL+SHIFT+BREAK helps.  Why?  Cuz the Break key is specifically ignored by Photoshop, documented or not.  That key is specifically unavailable for custom assignment nor do we use it anywhere else.  If that key-combo is helping, it's impacting some OTHER application, which would also be the likely trigger to the problems you're seeing.  What other resident apps do you have?  They don't necessarily have to be running; some little applet could be waiting for keyboard input (including the Break key) to come to life.  Common offenders are music editing and screen capture applications.

Does this make sense?

David

Hi David.
Yes, I know Break is an "out-of-bounds" key.
I found this "method" several years ago in Google after days of scouting for a fix. So it's not only me.
I had few suspicions (particularly Autohotkey which I use a lot), but this problem persisted after quitting all resident apps, even after reboots.
Also, I had this under Win7, and now on Windows Server 2016 on a completely new machine and software/drivers. Also it doesn't happen often, and it happens only in PS, not other Adobe apps.
Not sure what this combination does but it wasn't just me, and it seems to fix this while No other "solution" worked, then and now.

Hi Tedych,

Oh, it's great that you're posting a solution to help folks.  That's not at all what I was trying to say.

My concern is that the key-combo you've mentioned doesn't do anything in Photoshop, so if it's having an impact, then whatever it's having an impact on is the application responsible for the problem you're seeing.  Since I cannot reproduce this problem at all, it leads me to believe that other app is the cause of the failure.  But I'd like to know the specifics, so at the very least we can be confident of the source of the problem and potentially put in defensive code to avoid it impacting users.  Does that make sense?

Thanks,
David

p.s. -- many apps have side-car utilities or applets that either load automatically at boot or do not all go away when you quit the parent app and, quite frequently, such "little" apps do trigger these kinds of problems.

Yes, I know, we all want to know the specifics and cause for this.
The thing is, this issue may not happen for months and maybe year(s), but throughout the lifetime of the OS (in my case 5-8 years) it may happen 4-5 times. The first time I encountered this it took me almost a week of research.
So it's not something I/we can reproduce easily. I use my programs daily and can't remember to have used the PC in a different manner or started something rare when this issue happens. And it only happens in PS out of all hundreds of programs, even other Adobe's.
As to key combination, it may be just some of the keys that fix this (for example Ctrl+Break part, or Shift+Break, or maybe... ctrl+shift only?!, which is my combination to change OS languages), I don't know. It may affect something system that is used by PS, but the issue is strange and cannot think of why it wouldn't react at all when opening or creating a file.

I know I'm a couple years late to the party here, but this Ctrl+Shift+Pause (or Break if you prefer) solution just worked for me as well.

David, if you happen to see this post, I Googled what that key combination does, and it looks like it's a shortcut for Remote Desktop Services to switch between fullscreen mode and windowed mode.

When looking at the Services tab in the Task Manager in Windows 7, it looks like this particular background service goes by the name "TermService".

It might also be work mentioning that pressing Ctrl+Shift+Pause a second time does NOT cause the problem to come back.  Seems a bit odd to me since this key combination is a toggle function.

Hope this info helps you folks figure out a way to make Photoshop cope with whatever this service is doing.

Similar problem -- did you find a solution?

It may help if we could see your Photoshop System Info. Launch Photoshop, and select Help > System Info... and copy/paste the text in a reply.

Howdy,

That sounds really frustrating.  I can understand why you're upset.  Let's see if we can get your working again.

First, did this ever work for you?  When?  What sorts of changes have you made to your system since then?  Hardware or software can sometimes cause problems.

When you uninstalled, did you go back through and erase everything lingering in the installation directory?  We don't nuke user files, but such a file might be the source.

Have you checked under Edit > Preferences > Performance to see if at the top-right if Use Graphics Processor is checked?  Uncheck/Check it and see if that clears the problem (your GPU might have issues).

This sounds crazy, but have you checked the integrity of your font cache?  A single, corrupted font can be murder on your system.  Here are some tools and steps to check your font caches: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/troubleshoot-fonts-photoshop.html and cuz you're on Win10, here are some other pages to help you clear your system cache (cuz if you don't, it'll just recorrupt the PS cache): https://winaero.com/blog/rebuild-font-cache-windows-10/ and https://www.thewindowsclub.com/rebuild-font-cache-in-windows

If all this fails, ping me here and we can look at other things that could be causing your problem.

Thanks,
David

Reinstalling the product fixes it every time.  It only breaks when I need it the most.  Have tried every fix, occasionally one of them works, but not a second time,

I have two desktops and a laptop.  Happens on all of them.  I re-install Windows every year to keep things clean, and have a minimal number of installed programs.

The last stable Photoshop on Windows was CS6...

I use the product primarily to review client deliverables before handing them off to development teams, so it's not like I am running it all day every day.

I suspect there are a lot of us out there who have just given up and re-install over and over,.

At the risk of sounding like a corporate shill, I actually use Photoshop pretty much every day on a wide variety of machines (typically 4+).  I've never had this problem not have I heard of it.  So, it's not super common, cuz the forums light on fire when we ship a bug that even 5% of users hit.

Now, you do know that you have to periodically reconnect with the internet to keep your subscription valid, right?  And when the validation happens, it might take a minute or two, giving the APPEARANCE that PS hung, but really, it's just waiting for something over the 'net.  That's really the only difference with CS6.  The best work-around is to just run the app every week or three.

You should try the trouble-shooting steps I mentioned.  A corrupt font cache could easily be masked in the short term with a reinstall.  If you keep doing what you're doing...

If you'd like to schedule a web-hosted troubleshooting session, just let me know.

Thanks,
David

Hi David
There's nothing wrong with being a corporate shill!  Adobe products are awesome, and you guys all but own the market for design tools like PS/XD/AI.

The problem is confined to Windows.  Most designers are using MAC's.  I'd use a MAC, but as a Manager most of my life revolves around Microsoft Office products, which run much better on Windows.

A year or two ago I spent an hour with Adobe support and they couldn't figure it out either. 

When it breaks I'm on deadline with an Urgent! Critical! ASAP! deliverable. 

It works today.  I can't make it break.  But it will break again.

Just my two cents but you need to increase the budget for WIndows developers, I'd wager you build the products on Macs or Linux desktops and one poor outcast is tasked with porting it to Windows...

Nice talking to you.  I look forward to a future where I'm not on deadline watching the creative cloud installer.

Howdy,

Tell you what, next time this happens and breaks, ping me here immediately and I can do a web-hosted screenshare with you to troubleshoot the problem, ok?  I do it all the time.

Thanks,
David

Hi Brendan,

Did you try the same steps I suggested to the other users here?  Did they work for you?  Historically, font corruption is a bigger deal on Mac, so checking your font cache might be a good idea.

If the problem persists, let us know the steps you've already tried so we can figure out what to try next.

Thanks,
David