Could not initialize Photoshop because the file is locked

R
Posted By
rpremuz
Jul 21, 2004
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1438
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0
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Closed
On MS Windows XP Professional (SP1) when a limited user tries to start Adobe Photoshop CS v.8.0 he gets the following error message: "Could not initialize Photoshop because the file is locked. Use the ‘Properties’ command in the Windows Explorer to unlock the file."

It seems that the cause of the problem is the location for Photoshop scratch file (a kind of temporary file. In Photoshop CS you can set the volumes (i.e. partitions) for scratch files in the following way: Edit -> Preferences -> Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks You can define up to four scratch volumes.

Here is how the problem happened in my case:
The Photoshop CS v.8.0 was installed by an administrator on the system partition, i.e. on the partition where the Windows folder is located (also the "Documents and Settings" and "Program Files" folders) — by default this is the C: partition.
When the Photoshop was first started by a limited user account (who was not member of the local administrators group) he got the following message:
"You currently have Adobe Photoshop’s primary Scratch and Windows’ primary paging file on the same volume, which can result in reduced performance. It is recommended that you set Adobe Photoshop’s primary Scratch volume to be on a different volume, preferably on a different physical drive."

Following that recommendation the user set the Photoshop first scratch volume to D:\ (this was the second hard disk on his PC). But after closing Photoshop he was unable to start it again because of the error, "Could not initialize Photoshop because the file is locked …"

The problem is that the Photoshop is unable to create the scratch file on the D: partition as in Windows XP limited users don’t have right by default to create files on the root of a partition (D:\).

On the other hand if the first scratch volume is set to "Startup", then Photoshop opens the scratch file on the partition where it was installed, which is here the system partition. More precisely, in that case Photoshop opens the scratch file in the temporary folder pointed by the TEMP and TMP Windows environment variables. By default, these variables have the value, "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp" where %USERPROFILE% is another Windows environment variable that points to the user profile folder, e.g. "C:\Documents and %Settings\user_name".

Conclusion: if you want to have the Photoshop scratch file on a partition which is not the system partition, you also have to have right to write files to the root of that partition.

If you are not allowed to have that right, then as a workaround you can restore the Photoshop default user preferences by renaming or deleting the "Adobe Photoshop CS Prefs.psp" file in your user profile folder — more precisely in the folder,
%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop\8.0\Adobe Photoshop CS Settings\ (you can copy the path and open it in the Windows Explorer).

In my opinion this is a bug in Photoshop. When user changes the scratch drives, Photoshop should check if it is able to open a file on the corresponding location before allowing the change. Also, if it is unable to open the scratch file afterwards, it should try to open the file at another location.
According to some previous articles in the news groups, this bug also existed in some previous versions of Photoshop and it is strange that it hasn’t been corrected yet.

— rpr. /Robert Premuz/

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