markwilson.it

Photoshop 7 crashes on startup

Written by

Mark Wilson

in

Back at the end of 2003 I experienced a problem with Adobe Photoshop 7 crashing on a Windows XP machine. Since then, everything has been fine, but tonight the problem re-emerged so I dug out my old notes (which predate this blog) to try and find the answer.

Basically, when starting Photoshop, the splash screen displays as components are loaded and then nothing else appears (not even an error message).

Luckily, when this happened to me a few years back, I found a forum post with the answer to the problem – hold down the Ctrl, Alt and Shift keys whilst launching Photoshop (this will allow the settings file to be deleted and recreated). It’s worked twice for me now, hopefully blogging about it here will help someone else out too.

Comments

108 responses to “Photoshop 7 crashes on startup”

  1. Anonymous avatar
    Anonymous

    Saved my client, thanks!

  2. Jaime avatar
    Jaime

    Wow, I had this problem today and reinstalled Photoshop with no change. It took one Google search to find your post and it worked. Thank you thank you.

  3. Anonymous avatar
    Anonymous

    Ok, I’ll give it a shot.

  4. Anonymous avatar
    Anonymous

    P is for VICTORY!

    thnx tim graves

  5. Anonymous avatar
    Anonymous

    Teckspertise: The gift that keeps on giving. :) ThanX!

  6. Bash avatar
    Bash

    Awesome!! Hats off!!! mate, i was about to reinstall Photoshop 7, your blog solved my problem. Thanks once again….

  7. Renee avatar
    Renee

    Fantastic!! I was going mad. Had reinstalled but still had the same problem.

    This little trick got everything working again.

  8. Anonymous avatar
    Anonymous

    Thanks. I had wasted a lot of time on this and you solved the problem in seconds.

    Martin

  9. Anonymous avatar
    Anonymous

    I really, really hope this works – I’m on a deadline and going crazy with this stupid bug all of a sudden o_o;

  10. Anonymous avatar
    Anonymous

    Tnx m8.. . I HAd reinstalled Photoshop like 20 times :S.. i had deleted everything but the problems are still there .. but when i seech this furom .. i saw your solution.. i tried it and there they go.. they are working again.. Thank you very much (Y)

  11. saurabh avatar
    saurabh

    Thanks man! i freelance, and as such have nobody to explain except the paying client when ps7 just refuses to work. You’re a life saver. This one particular client that im workin for right now is a tuff one. Thanks buddy. this bailed me out.

  12. Rich avatar
    Rich

    Thank you so much! I was about to smash my computer with a hammer. You’re a god among men.

  13. Karyn avatar
    Karyn

    You are my hero. I love you! I thought I had lost photoshop forever. Thank you!

  14. Mark Wilson avatar
    Mark Wilson

    I’m really glad that this post is helping people :-)

    It’s particularly good for my ego when people refer to me as “my hero” and “a god among men” :-)

  15. Lewis Shepherd avatar
    Lewis Shepherd

    Thank you so much, This really saved me.

  16. avatar
    Anonymous

    this worked. thank-you so much!

  17. G00nage avatar
    G00nage

    Thank you Thank you

  18. avatar
    Anonymous

    it worked!!! i couldnt figure oyut what was wrong… i thought it was my scanner haha …but not any more! thanks!

  19. Monique avatar
    Monique

    Hey thanks soooo much. You saved the day, I had tryed uninstalling and reinstalling and everything else I could, to try to fix it. Now its working, and now I can tell my 19 year old son “I fixed it”” hehe

    Thanks heaps :-)

  20. Mark Wilson avatar
    Mark Wilson

    Monique – so glad it helped… it’s always nice to show the teenagers that we know stuff too!

    Mark

  21. peterwalker avatar
    peterwalker

    Brilliant tip! Thanks.

  22. Mac Duncan avatar
    Mac Duncan

    Thanks so much, I was just about to attack the registry with an ax, but I read your post before I went crazy. Thanks!

  23. Genea avatar
    Genea

    THANKYOU.

    I have no idea what caused the error, but you fixed it for me! I love PS7 and have no hopes for upgrading any time soon.

  24. Amanda avatar
    Amanda

    You rock! You saved me! Thank you for taking the time to help all of us, you are a kind, good person. A special prayer for you and yours this evening!

  25. Phill avatar
    Phill

    Thankyou my friend, finding this page has made my night. Full respect for taking the time to send it round. I raise my hat to you man, if you are ever in town i owe you a pint.

  26. David avatar
    David

    I’ll add my thanks to this growing list, I’m going to link over here on my little blog and click a couple of ads to show my gratitude!

  27. Mark Wilson avatar
    Mark Wilson

    I’m glad this advice has turned out to be so useful!

    Links and ad clicks are always good ;-) – thank you.

  28. Ulysses avatar
    Ulysses

    Hi Mark

    I did use the Ctrl-Shift-Alt solution; and thanks it worked.
    I have the same problem today, but C _ S _ A does not work: I get the Adobe Photoshop Properties page.
    Any quick solution left?

    Ulysses

  29. jan avatar
    jan

    As I was another one who was actually stuck with this problem I also need to say THANK YOU!

  30. avatar
    Anonymous

    One simple google search and I found this. Worked perfectly. thanks for putting this up!

  31. Josh avatar
    Josh

    You saved me, Mark – I work two hundred miles from my IT department, without admin rights on my laptop, and today my PS7 wouldn’t load. You rescued me from a long drive (or, just as bad, an intrusive Remote Desktop visit from IT!).

    Thanks!

  32. mark avatar
    mark

    this just helped me! thanks!

  33. Em avatar
    Em

    Thanks a mil, saved my day! Before i saw this post i thought everything was crashing so ran out to get backup disk… (dreaming a lot about it happening lately) now photoshop works and i have peace of mind!

  34. John Hotchkiss avatar
    John Hotchkiss

    Saved my butt here – thanks!

  35. giuseppe avatar
    giuseppe

    awsome, tried reinstalling and everything, worked a treat

  36. Hank avatar
    Hank

    It doesn’t work for me. :'(

  37. avatar
    Anonymous

    Thank you a million times – I have spent so much on this that I don’t even want to know why this solution works – thanks again.

  38. avatar
    Anonymous

    Works for CS3 as well – I’ve just experienced it for the last 2 hours…Well done

  39. katy boyd` avatar
    katy boyd`

    I cannot thank you enough!!! I was going crazy trying to sort this out, and you did it! Also having a terrible time with CS on my mac… pretty much the same problem… any suggestions?

    Thanks again!!!

  40. Mark Wilson avatar
    Mark Wilson

    Hi Katy, I’m glad it helped you out. I’ve not has that problem with CS2 on my Mac (haven’t got CS) but someone left a comment to say that the same fix works for CS3, so I guess it might work for CS/CS2 as well.

    Good luck, Mark

  41. Iris avatar
    Iris

    Been having this problem for months, sometimes it would load fine, other times it would crash time and time again. This trick solved my problem! Thank you!

  42. Cassi Anderson avatar
    Cassi Anderson

    OMG!!! YOU SAVED MY ASS! I was getting SOOOO frustrated!!
    Thanks for sharing!

  43. dave avatar
    dave

    thanks for tip will try it asap. from your responses, It looks like that will fix it. I only do photo touchup for newpaper pix so photoshop 7 has lots more than I need but still have the program thanks agin from illinois

  44. Carolyn avatar
    Carolyn

    This was driving me mad, even after I uninstalled/reinstalled. It would just disappear while it was loading. I know it’s not my computer, as it has just been cleaned and defrag’d. I was ready to give up entirely and then I found this. It worked! HORRAY!!! THANK YOU!! :-D

  45. Prominio avatar
    Prominio

    Thanks a lot! After 3 days without photoshop, I was planning to format my computer, when I came across this simple trick! You are great, thanks again!

  46. Jessie avatar
    Jessie

    Genius! You have saved me from one heck of a headache!

  47. Justin Alexander avatar
    Justin Alexander

    Mark, you have just saved me from hours of frustration. Thank you so much!

  48. Salo avatar
    Salo

    Thx a lot!

  49. PrehistoricFuzzball, ITN Admin avatar
    PrehistoricFuzzball, ITN Admin

    Being my PS is corperate inatall I didn’t have time to a bookshelf to read up on this kick-start but as I get time I will definately wiki-nate this for a PS ref as it saves time and install as well as haggling with SMS Perms. Being that all users aren’t Admins, (thank goodness),and can’t get around SMS, this provides a very nice end-user option to try and avoid a reinstall / reimage.

    After re-installing over the top, uninstalling and re-installing still had same issue of PS7.0 crashing (as #44 stated) where as IR7.0 worked just fine. All I can say after reading this post is NICE SAVE, Excellent.
    This worked for my instance, and strange that PS7.0 would not delete the setting upon uninstall and re-create on fresh install.
    Nevertheless, this worked while other options didn’t.
    Kudos, and cheers on the remedy.

    Votes: Mark into Adobe’s PS CS FutureCrew Design team :)

  50. Eve avatar
    Eve

    Thanks a lot. I knew not to panic enough, and Google is my first resource for everything. Respect.

  51. Dan The Wolf-Bear avatar
    Dan The Wolf-Bear

    Thanks a lot, you are my hero. The problmem was solved, thanx thanx thanx thanx *bear hugs*

  52. Paul R Gornitzka avatar
    Paul R Gornitzka

    This is the first time its happened to me. Ive tried just about everything in the book. When I try this technique, it only crashes faster now. I wish I had the luck the rest of you did

  53. somak avatar
    somak

    thnks a lot. It was really a problem and i could not solve it. One google search and the answer was there!!

  54. Heather Ann avatar
    Heather Ann

    I love you, I love you. THANK YOU for blogging this! I had this problem once before and the only way I could fix it was to start a whole new profile but with iTunes, I didn’t want to lose all that. I had to figure it out! Thank you so much! I read this elsewhere but not for this problem so I wasn’t sure it would help this problem. Thank you!!!!

  55. Neil avatar
    Neil

    It worked for me. Thanks a lot, you just saved me countless hours of anxiety!

  56. Sharon avatar
    Sharon

    THANK YOU!!!
    I was really starting to freak out when uninstalling/reinstalling didn’t work and neither did a system restore, or last known good configuration.
    I concur with Heather Ann up there…
    I love you, I love you, THANK YOU for blogging this lol.

  57. Vanessa avatar
    Vanessa

    I’m so glad I found this page! This fixed my problem :) THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

  58. drac avatar
    drac

    Thank you very much!!! i’ve lost 2 days before finding your blog, and it took just2 minutes to solve the problem. Thank you very very much!

  59. jessie avatar
    jessie

    YAY! it’s fixed! i LOVE you!! :)

  60. Lunaki avatar
    Lunaki

    my question is.. What even causes that bug? Because it happened to me, and I’d like to try avoiding it again.. xD

  61. Chris avatar
    Chris

    Nice one, you’re a legend. It saved me too.

  62. Ntsiki avatar
    Ntsiki

    Thanks a lot bro..! It really works. After stressing and re-installing. Thanks man. Really.

  63. Bjarne avatar
    Bjarne

    You are a genius, thank you, it saved me hours!

  64. chrs2phr - philippines avatar
    chrs2phr – philippines

    thanks! it worked twice for me too. =)

  65. Lesley avatar
    Lesley

    Thank you, worked perfectly first time, you are truly awesome for posting this. Yay!

  66. JeffT avatar
    JeffT

    Tyvm for the treatment of the problem. I reinstall the sw twice and it didn’t fix the problem. This is awsome !

  67. PhilRudd avatar
    PhilRudd

    You just saved the life of my computer because I was about to strangle the bugger….
    There’s a lot of old voodoo and old software at the company I work for. Thanks for solving this for me!

  68. Jexx avatar
    Jexx

    Well, you just saved the day for one more girl/person. Tech support at work reinstalled my PS7 this morning and it still gave me the same problem…thanks to you I got it sorted out :)

  69. Icono avatar
    Icono

    I’m past due on a website project and, all of a sudden, my Photoshop 7 started crashing on bootup. I thought it was a conflict with Vista and was resorting to other programs that just didn’t cut it. Your post has saved my ass =) Thanks so much!

  70. RandomInsano avatar
    RandomInsano

    Wow, thanks a lot for this.

  71. Antoine avatar
    Antoine

    Hi Mark,
    You showed us in an explicit way the beauty of symplicity
    thanks!

  72. BB avatar
    BB

    It’s Feb 2010 & you still have hero status! This posting is a true gem. I’ll probably never forget this. Thanks a 10^6.

  73. brandon avatar
    brandon

    Ad reinstalled Photoshop like 20 times :S.. i had deleted everything but the problems are still there .. but when i seech this furom .. i saw your solution.. i tried it and there they go.. they are working again.. Thank you very much (Y)

  74. Yongil avatar
    Yongil

    Great post. Thanks a lot!

  75. Kevin avatar
    Kevin

    Thank you. Here it is 2010 and found your post. Thanks for having it up. Same boat as most of everyone else – reinstall after reinstall with no luck. Your solution worked.

    Thanks.

  76. Kit Froebel avatar
    Kit Froebel

    I am extremely grateful for your sharing your expertise and your experience. It really helped me out tonight. Thank you!

  77. Stephen Daedalus avatar
    Stephen Daedalus

    thanks alot for your post. it was a real help and saved my bacon!

  78. Sunclair avatar
    Sunclair

    Thanks, this shows again that an old tip still might come in handy.

  79. delilah avatar
    delilah

    Doesn’t work and in fact makes PS 7 vanish faster than it does without.

  80. laxman avatar
    laxman

    thnxxxxxxxxxx..
    its workinggg…
    [hold alt+ctrl+shft while opening adobe PS7…
    and press yes den]

  81. ~Gman avatar
    ~Gman

    Yep. googled “photoshop 7” crashes and got to your post.
    At first i thought I was supposed to hold down the keys while clicking on photoshop, but my girlfriend said no. you’re an idiot. click on photoshop and THEN hold down the three keys. (she didn’t really say that). So anyways, it worked and you stopped my headache from becoming extreeeeeeeme. Thanks! ~G

  82. Matt Witt avatar
    Matt Witt

    Thank you. This saved me a lot of time and money.

  83. Chris Brown avatar
    Chris Brown

    Awesome! – It works, If only everything software problem was this easy to fix. Thanks very much, you saved me so much time

  84. Lucilius avatar
    Lucilius

    It worked! Thank you, you’re awesome! :)

  85. reinheart avatar
    reinheart

    Thx so much…
    today i’m solved the problem in my office, because your tips.
    Thx so much….

  86. Staci avatar
    Staci

    PHEW!! My stomach sank when this happened… So great – thanks for posting. Worked like a charm!

  87. Lorraine avatar
    Lorraine

    Hi
    Will that work on a mac? or is it command key instead or ctrl or alt?

  88. Mark Wilson avatar
    Mark Wilson

    @Lorraine – I haven’t tried this on a Mac – if it would, then I think you would use Cmd instead of Ctrl and Opt instead of Alt but I imagine the Mac version works differently.

  89. Lorraine avatar
    Lorraine

    Hi Mark
    Thanks for your reply, tried both versions but alas no joy so it must be something different on a Mac. All of a sudden both illustrator and photoshop are not opening, but Image ready is which is strange.

  90. avatar
    Anonymous

    THANK YOU it worked!!

  91. Kedai Nasi avatar
    Kedai Nasi

    you, have saved my day mr!

    although i’ve installed ps7 again, but you saved me from going crazy (because of the repeating error)

    thank you again, mr.

  92. Paedi avatar
    Paedi

    Ahhhh thank you so much! It worked!

  93. Maomao avatar
    Maomao

    Thank you so much. It works now.

  94. Sonu mittal avatar
    Sonu mittal

    Thanks sir,
    Great trick

  95. Jeff avatar
    Jeff

    Thanks for the tip. This is the only thing that worked.

  96. narsim avatar
    narsim

    thanks brothes its work thank u so much

  97. Surendra Singh avatar
    Surendra Singh

    thanks a lot, it’s working now

    thanks …………….

  98. A.Wakeel Khan avatar
    A.Wakeel Khan

    it worked for me also but no through explorer open photoshop by going through start button and then Programs and ….photoshop. In explorer trying this trick will open properties of the program.

    Thanx

  99. swapan avatar
    swapan

    thnx in adv. yet to try when it comes again

  100. Helen Verte avatar
    Helen Verte

    Thank you for this post. I saved a lot of time because of it. I’m grateful.

  101. Dipkiran Gajmer avatar
    Dipkiran Gajmer

    oh man you are a life saver….thanks a lot.

  102. nairdy avatar
    nairdy

    like so many people who previously commented I uninstalled, reinstalled, uninstalled, cleaned up registry, installed again, etc etc all to no avail … and here was a simple fix! why oh why do software suppliers let their programs out into the big wide world with faults like this and with no intelligent report on the problem !!!

  103. avatar
    Anonymous

    Its February of 2013 and this still works! Thank you so much :)

  104. jojo avatar
    jojo

    fantastic. saved my deadline… bless you

  105. aj sidhu avatar
    aj sidhu

    Dude u are simply awesome. Saved my day

  106. avatar
    Anonymous

    Thank you really working fantastic….

  107. avatar
    Anonymous

    thank you…God bless u

  108. ravi avatar
    ravi

    thank you very much friend

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More posts