"Photoshop not responding"

Score another one for Google. In the middle of posting this morning, we clicked on the desktop Photoshop icon as usual, and nothing happened. Uninstalled, rebooted, reinstalled, rebooted, and still nothing happened. Adobe.com didn't have the answer, so we took a deep breath and dialed their 800 number:

Tech support did their best, but it wasn't quite good enough. After many minutes of tapping our fingers while automated lists of options ran their course and rolling our eyes as bland interludes of Musak filled the on-hold interstices, a perfectly pleasant young man finally picked up on the other end. He walked us through a series of possible solutions, and finally we were able to open Photoshop, but not as Sissy Willis. We had to create a new, fictional user and open it under that guise. A workaround kind of solution, not an elegant one. Total cost, not to mention the sense of powerlessness: $39.

Then we did what we should have done in the first place: Opened Google and typed in "Photoshop not responding." Clicked on a likely website -- a kind of forum where a voice in the wilderness types in her computer problem, and geeks write back with likely solutions. A Canadian geek calling himself *manyk at something called deviantART had the answer:

What I would suggest is deleting your Photoshop Preferences file. Then relaunch Photoshop so it can remake it. It MAY be corrupted. The files should be in "Documents and settings/user/application data/adobe/photoshop 7" folder. This is typically hidden, so you may have to enable hidden folders if you don't have it so now.

Total cost, not to mention the sense of empowerment at finding the answer ourselves: $.00.

Comments

[Trygve Rosenvinge]

Thank you, finding your site and a solution to my problem has really saved my day. I've spent a few long hours now, trying to make Photoshop cooperate with me, and finally thanks to you, it's alive again and I can continue my long delayed school-work.

[Sissy Willis]

Thanks for writing, Trygve. When I posted this, besides for personal therapy, I was secretly hoping it might help a fellow sufferer out there in cyberspace someday, and now it has. 'Hope your assignment was a brilliant success! I've posted about your comments here:

http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2004/05/google_saves_li_3.html

[Johan]

Thanks for this solution. Been working on it for half a day (uninstall/install, windows update, registry crawling, adobe updates) before finding this easy way out. Makes my day.
Johan

[Sissy Willis]

Glad to be of help, Johan. I myself have had the same problem recur twice, and each time I just googled in "Photoshop not responding" and found my own invaluable post at the top of the list. :)

[Cliff]

Thank you Thank you Thank you. Photoshop up and running once again.

[Sissy Willis]

It's a good thing!

[dave]

sick ****, google is my standard practice. Anything go wrong write it in and search! Every problem i ever had always gets resolved and this one extra quick! Lets hope it don't go wrong again Eh!

[Ben Eccleston]

This is a great bit of information. Many thanks for helping me resolve this issue quickly.

Regards,

Ben

[Sissy Willis]

Glad I could help!

[Ian Nicholson]

There's a much easier way to delete the Photoshop preferences folder.

Simply launch Photoshop, and press CTRL-ALT-SHIFT as the splash screen appears. You will be asked if you wish to delete your preferences. Answer 'Yes', and hey-presto everything works!

Enjoy!

[Sissy Willis]

Thanks, Ian. I'll try it next time the problem recurs. :)

[Leona]

This was a great help. I just spent an hour guiding my friend through trying all kinds of things, none of which worked...then I found this :)

[Sissy Willis]

So glad you found it helpful. :)

[michael]

Ian, thanks for that! worked fine, i loaded photoshop cs for the first time which must have corrupted something as i'd previosuly used 7 all the time, but then neither worked but 7 works again :)

[Mark]

Thanks so much for the "Photoshop not responding" tip !!! Last night and this morning my old version 5.5 wouldn't open any photos, so I went to Google first, hoping to avoid a re-install. And there you were! Deleted the Prefs file out of the Settings folder, and it's back up and running - thanks so much. Also, I love the photos on your website - great work!

[VesteNotus]

Thank you so much for posting this on the internet!

for the last 2 weeks, i've been wracking my brain and the adobe sites trying to figure out what was wrong. Finally, I tried to use ImageReady to jump to photoshop when the keywords "Photoshop not responding" popped up...

typed it into google and yours was the first site i went to... simple as that, it's fixed - thank you!

[Sissy Willis]

:)

[Walter]

Incredible. My Photoshop was loading but would disappear and not run. I too went to Google and searched, "photoshop not resonding". Found this site first. I deleted the Preferences file. It's fixed!!!
Very much appreciated!

[creyes]

wow! its magic! thanks for the great tip.
i have already spent over two hours figuring why suddenly my adobe photoshop doesnt want to load up anymore...i have deadlines to meet very very soon.

your site (and of course thru manyk's tip) proved to be very helpful! thanks for posting it! Cheers!

[Cliff Barney]

Again underscoring the awesome value of blogging. I found this post via a Google search after spending several hours fighting my Photoshop 7.0 installation. I even uninstalled and reinstalled Photoshop 7.0 and it was still "not responding". Manyk's simple fix (deleting the preferences file) did the trick.

Thank you "manyk" for the fix, and thank you Sissy Willis for posting it.

[mayank]

hey thanks
this thing worked like a charm
its easy and it works

THANKS so much
i spent 2 hours reinstallng n doing all kinds of stuff
and this tweek solved the problem in 9 seconds lol

[Jaimi]

I never post comments. But it is SO necessary that I say THANK YOU for taking the time to post this information!!!!!! I have been trying to figure out this problem from 10 am this morning until now (5 pm)!!!!!!!!! Until I "googled" the words "photoshop not responding." Now i can FINALLY start my work!!!!!!! Again, many many thanks!!!!

[Kiersten Hanna]

One million thank you's..........

[Vvivii]

After deleting & reinstalling I had the same problem with the brite& contrast locking up the program and not responding.

That fix of deleting the preferences worked for me, too! It only took seconds!
Thank you!

[neng]

Many many and many thanks, your experience help me survive....and I'm quite sure that this solution would help more people in the future. Thank you.