I had a hell of a time with Photoshop this week. For whatever reason, it just wouldn’t respond–like a teenager protesting her curfew. But, after quite a bit of digging and several expletive laced tirades, I managed to figure out how to get Photoshop CS6 from locking the bathroom door and cutting itself.
Update Your Graphics Drivers
If you’re like me, you don’t balk at the opportunity to update a driver. Every chance to update a driver is a chance to improve the performance of your computer, right? Well, in this instance I was wrong. AMD sent me a little message saying, “Hey, come try out our new beta drivers for your graphics card. Rainbows and unicorns are just a click away! Wheeeeeee!” The laughter of children in the background, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the hope for a brighter future convinced me to push “install.” And guess what, everything worked fine–I thought.
It wasn’t until a few days after I had updated my graphics drivers that I realized Photoshop CS6 had stopped working. You see, I only use Photoshop if I really have to. Most of my workflow is with Lightroom, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver. Photoshop has turned into something like a fetish sex shop: I only open that door when things have gotten boring. Sure enough, one of my colleagues is asking me to open up an image in Photoshop, and that’s when the Happy Fun Time came to a crashing halt. No more rainbows. No more unicorns. Just fail.
Updating my drivers (or rolling them back, as the case was) is what cured the problem. I had to go back to the AMD Drivers page and find the not-so-beta version of my drivers (13.1, as of this date). Once I re-installed the drivers, Photoshop popped back up and it even left me with a list of the files it was choosing to ignore during its temper tantrum. The peace was made, but before that peace was made I’d taken a more serious measure.
Uninstall and Reinstall Photoshop CS6
Before I had even thought about the fact that Photoshop might want to use stable graphics drivers to work its gentle magic, I decided that it was time to uninstall it–just to show it that I couldn’t be messed with, that I was serious this time. Several people, on the random forums that Google was sending me to, told me that if I deleted my current installation of Photoshop, execution-style, that the next installations of Photoshop would see that I was serious and continue to work without question. They were wrong.
Each reinstallation of Photoshop, like so many buddhist monks, burned themselves alive on my desktop. My authoritarian rule was coming to an end. I looked at the other Adobe applications on my desktop, wondering who would be the next to betray me! Something was amiss; it was time to bring in the secret police.
Scan Your PC for Malicious Software
I downloaded a copy of Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool. It was time to scan these files–to find the usurper and bring them to justice. In front of all of my Adobe applications, I would execute the spyware or the malware that had corrupted Photoshop and turned it against the state. But nothing was found.
Grief stricken and one step away from entering a twelve-step program, I finally faced the truth; my lust for newer drivers and my greed for better performance was the cause of my downfall. If anything can be learned from my descent, it is this: don’t update your drivers unless it’s absolutely necessary. In our blind rush toward progress, we may be rushing from the real thing.
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