# How to Fix ‘Photoshop keeps crashing or freezing on Windows PC’ Issue

**URL:** https://www.compsmag.com/blogs/how-to-fix-photoshop-keeps-crashing-or-freezing-on-windows-pc-issue/
**Author:** Ayushi Chauhan
**Published:** 2021-12-17
**Updated:** 2021-12-17
**Categories:** Blogs
**Tags:** Blogs Daily, Computer Guides, Computers Tips and Tutorials, guiderobert, Guides and Tutorials, guiding12, How To Guide, How To Guides, Tips, Tricks, Windows 10, Windows Tips
**Reading Time:** 8 min

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This tip is about the how to Fix ‘Photoshop keeps crashing or freezing on Windows PC’ Issue. So read this free guide, How to Fix ‘Photoshop keeps crashing or freezing on Windows PC’ Issue step by step. If you have query related to same article you may contact us.

## How to Fix ‘Photoshop keeps crashing or freezing on Windows PC’ Issue - Guide

External modules are a typical reason for crashes, particularly assuming they haven't been updated to work with the latest Photoshop variant.  … Use Photoshop and see if the problem really happens.  Assuming not, the problem was caused by one of the modules you installed.  Update all to the latest version.

## Make sure Photoshop system requirements are met

If your Photoshop keeps crashing or cannot work properly on your device from the start, you should first check your computer's specs to see if it meets Photoshop's requirements.  The minimum system requirements for Adobe Photoshop on Windows device are listed below.

Processor: Intel® or AMD processor with 64-bit support;  2GHz processor or faster

OS: Microsoft Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 (64-bit), Microsoft Windows Update October 10, 2018 (64-bit) Version 1809 or later

RAM: 4GB or more (8GB recommended)

Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 or equivalent;  Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 or Quadro T1000 recommended

Hard Drive Space: 3.1GB or more of available hard drive space for 64-bit installation;  additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system)

Monitor resolution: 1280 x 800 display at 100% UI scale with 16-bit color and 512MB or more of dedicated VRAM;  2GB is recommended

OpenGL: OpenGL 2.0 compliant system

If the problem persists even though Photoshop's system requirements are met, you can proceed with the following solutions.

## keep your Photoshop Up-To date

By updating your Photoshop, you may get some new ones features and bug fixes for certain known issues.  So, if you haven't checked Photoshop updates for a long time, check and install the latest program updates, and it can help fix Photoshop freeze or related issues effectively.

To verify that you have the latest version of Photoshop, open the program and choose Help > About Photoshop.

To check for and install the latest updates, you can choose Help > Updates and follow the onscreen instructions to complete the process.  Alternatively, you can use Adobe Creative Cloud to update it.

## Update your Windows

Furthermore, outdated operating system can also lead to Photoshop crashing, freezing or other problems.

According to reports, some users have resolved the issue by updating Windows to the latest version, and you can also give it a try.  Here it is how to update Windows 10:

Press Windows + I to open Settings.

Navigate to Update & Security > Windows Update.

Click Check for updates button in the right pane.  Download and install all available updates for your Windows.

## Make changes to the image preview

If your Photoshop keeps crashing or not responding when you're previewing or editing an image, you may be able to make some changes to the application to resolve the issue and improve performance.

### Use the efficiency indicator

Using the Efficiency Gauge, your computer can run at 100% efficiency and can solve Photoshop freezing issue.  To activate it, you need to navigate to the bottom of the image window and click on the right arrow icon.  No pop-up menu, choose Efficiency.

### Disable third-party plugins

Similar to other advanced applications, Photoshop also allows users to add plug-ins to features.  However, third-party plug-ins have been proven to be a common reason for most Photoshop-related issues.

Photoshop is not responding, crashing, the freezing issue in our discussion can also be caused by faulty or incompatible plug-ins.

In that case, you can try to disable your third-party plugins by following the steps below.

Close Photoshop.  Hold the Shift key and double click on the Photoshop icon to launch it.

Before entering the main interface, you will see a window saying “Skip loading optional and third-party plugins?”  Just click Yes button Continue.

Check if your Photoshop can work correctly now.  If the problem persists, plug-ins should not be to blame and you can skip the following steps and move on to another measure.  If the problem goes away, you will need to continue discovering the problematic plugin.

Close Photoshop, move one of your plugins from the Photoshop Plugins folder to another location, and start the program again to see if the issue is resolved.  Repeat the step for these plug-ins one by one to find the problem and stop using it.

### Clear Photoshop cache

Photoshop tends to store data for Undo, Clipboard and History to help you work on images more conveniently.  However, this can consume a large amount of memory and can cause Photoshop to crash or freeze.

Therefore, clearing Photoshop cache can be a good solution to the problem.  To do this, just click Edit on the top ribbon bar and choose Clear > All.

### Disable font preview

By default, the font preview feature is enabled in Photoshop and the size is normally set to Medium.

To fix Photoshop's freezing problem, it's also recommended to disable Photoshop. feature, which can also improve system performance.  To disable it, just click Type > Font Preview Size > None.

## Modify performance settings

What's more, some users also recommend modifying their preference settings, especially the performance section.  Actually, this won't solve any Photoshop crash issues, but it might speed up up general work, improves performance to some extent, and resolves Photoshop freezing or unresponsive in some cases.

On your Windows PC, go to Edit > Preferences > Performance.  Then you can modify some settings as follows:

Memory Usage: Move the slider to make Photoshop use about 70%

History and cache: Increase cache levels and reduce cache block size to increase speed up moving and zooming in a document.

Graphics Processor Settings: Click Advanced Settings and choose Basic, Normal or Advanced drawing mode as per your needs.

After that, you need to restart Adobe Photoshop for these changes to take effect.  Hopefully, your Adobe Photoshop will work perfectly again.

## Free up Disk Space

Photoshop requires enough RAM to function properly.  When there is not enough RAM, it uses the free space on available drives like a scratch disk and saves the data here.  When the disk has no free space, Photoshop may freeze or become unresponsive.  Of course, inadequate disk space can also slow down other installed applications.

If the scratch disk is full, you can go to Photoshop performance settings to set another fast drive with more free space as the scratch disk using the arrow buttons.  Alternatively, you can also extend the current drive to take up more free space.  But if your disk is running out, it should be more effective to release up disk space.

To clean up your disk, you can use the MiniTool Partition Wizard to filter out large useless files or folders and quickly remove them.  Just download the free disk manager to try it out.

Install the program and run it to get the main interface.

Choose the Space Analyzer module from the top toolbar.

Select the drive you want to clean up and click on Scan button.  Then all files and folders saved on the drive will be displayed here.

You can click Size to sort these files and folders by size, from largest to smallest.  This way you can find large and useless files quickly.  To remove an item, just right click and choose Delete (Permanently).

## Upgrade to a larger hard drive (optional)

This is an alternative Fix 6 method. If you need these large files and don't want to delete them, you might consider upgrading your disk to a larger, faster hard drive, such as replacing a 5400 rpm drive with a 7200 rpm drive.

To update your hard drive, you can also use the MiniTool Partition Wizard.  But note that this feature it is not available in the free edition.

Connect the prepared hard drive to your computer and start the program.

Select the original disc and choose Copy Disc in the left pane.  No pop-up window, choose the new hard disk as the destination disk to store the source content and click Next button.

Choose your copy options and configure the layout of the new disk according to your needs and click Next button.

## Final note

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