Adobe Photoshop Fails to Launch due to Permission Issues

Adobe Photoshop Fails to Launch due to Permission Issues

Symptom
When Photoshop is launched, an error message pops up notifying that the user lacks the necessary privileges to continue. Messages:

"Could not initialize Photoshop because the file is locked or you do not have the necessary access privileges. Use the 'Properties' command in the Windows Explorer to unlock the file."

or

"Could not open a scratch file because the file is locked or you do not have the necessary access privileges. use the 'Properties' command in the Windows Explorer to unlock the file."

Cause
The user preferences file within photoshop is corrupted or attempting to save into a restricted location.

Solution
To fix and prevent this error from happening, the user will navigate to:

C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Adobe Photoshop CS5 Settings

Depending on what version of photoshop is causing the error to appear you will delete the following file:

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Prefs.psp (for 32bit version)

Adobe Photoshop X64 CS5 Prefs.psp (for 64bit version)



After opening up photoshop, navigate to Edit > Preferences > Performance

There will be a section called Scratch Disks; verify that D:\ is the one checked as active, not C:\ and change it if necessary.

After restarting photoshop the problem will go away.

Notice that if this preference file becomes corrupt again, the previous steps have to be taken again to prevent permission errors.

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