Photoshop cs6 crashes - atio6axx.dll faulting

Question

Hello,
I have a Windows 7 64 bit installed and whenever I play a little with my photoshop cs6 it crashes.
On event viewer of windows it says
Faulting application name: Photoshop.exe, version: 13.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x4f61c045
Faulting module name: atio6axx.dll, version: 6.14.10.11631, time stamp: 0x4f8b14ac
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000b520b5
Faulting process id: 0x2a60
Faulting application start time: 0x01ce52e148491bee
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6 (64 Bit)\Photoshop.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\atio6axx.dll
Report Id: a05818ce-bed4-11e2-8d9f-5453ed1bbd08
I've installed the latest AMD catalyst driver, and still crashes occur.
Thanks,
Sagi

Answer 1

Hello,
I realize this is over a year old post but as it comes second in search engine with keywords "atio6axx.dll crash" I wanted to answer my solution to this.
I was having same problem with Photoshop CS6 but with Windows 8.1. You can guess by .dll name that problem is indeed with ATI/AMD and drivers. In my case, I was using Microsoft version of graphics driver since AMD has not published Win 8.1 64bit version drivers. I believe this is the reason of crash. I know that OP has installed AMD Catalyst but it really easy to not notice that it installed everything else except the display drivers.
Solution 1
- Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Performance. Untick "Use Graphics Processor".
Solution 2
With this you can actually use GPU support. I know this is not ideal but I have not encountered any problems with this solution yet. Everything is working fine.
- Close Photoshop.
- Go ahead and download BETA version of AMD drivers for your GPU. (Win 8, 64bit)
- Open extractor/installer and let it extract files (default: C:\AMD)
- After extraction, AMD installer should open. Close it.
- Press Windows button + Pause and open Device manager.
- Expand Display adapters and doubleclick your device.
- Go to Driver tab and click Update Driver.
- Click Browse my computer for driver software -> Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer -> Have a disk...
- Browse to folder where you extracted file and navigate to AMD\AMD_Catalyst_13.4_Legacy_Beta_Vista_Win7_Win8\Packages\Drivers\Display\W86A_INF
- Pick "C8156445" (Make sure its C8 and not C7) from the list and press OK. Choose your GPU and press install. You screen will flick few times and you will hear plug in and plug out sounds. Give it a minute.
- Done. No need for a restart, photoshop should work now.