Disable 'graphics hardware enhancements' in Photoshop CS6?

[RedHelix2011]

Hi Everyone,

I have what is hopefully a straightforward question: I'm running Photoshop CS6 on a virtual machine. (That sounds weird but believe me when I say it works fine in a VDI environment and that's not the issue.)

When it launches, it predictably throws the familiar error message 'Photoshop has encountered a problem with the display driver," etc etc. This error message is expected since it's the VMware Tools driver.

What I'm wondering is if there's any way to disable this popup. It says it has "temporarily disabled enhancements which use the graphics hardware." What are those enhancements, and how do I disable them permanently?

Thanks in advance!

edit: I have tried going into Preferences>Performance and tinkering with GPU options, but it's ghosted out as I have Design Standard.

[Chris Cox]

The GPU preference is disabled because the display driver returned errors.

You should notify VMWare so they can fix their driver to work correctly and not return errors.

[RedHelix2011]

I appreciate your reply but it has nothing to do with my question.

[Chris Cox]

It has everything to do with your question, and explains a few things that you really need to know.

[Guest]

If you disable the GPU in performance here is link to what you will miss out on.  Stuff about 1/2 way down page.

http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cs6-gpu-faq.html

[RedHelix2011]

My question is how to disable this alert when I have a video driver with known issues and it's not peformance impacting, and what I really need to know is the answer to that.

[Noel Carboni]

Are you using a VM to run Windows on a Mac, or on a Windows system?  I ask, because the latter might provide better GPU support (I'm not sure).

I'm running Windows VMs on Windows 7 and I don't see the alert. I find I can use GPU acceleration in a VMware virtual machine, though the virtual VRAM isn't large enough to use 3D functionality.  I don't do a lot of production work in this mode, though, just testing.  But things like the animated zoom and other GPU functions seem to work just fine.

Make sure you have the latest VMware software.

Here's what I see in Photoshop Help - System Info when run in a VM with Photoshop CS6:

Adobe Photoshop Version: 13.0 (13.0 20120315.r.428 2012/03/15:21:00:00) x64

Operating System: Windows NT

Version: 6.2

System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:12, Stepping:2 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2

Physical processor count: 8

Processor speed: 3458 MHz

Built-in memory: 8191 MB

Free memory: 7014 MB

Memory available to Photoshop: 7206 MB

Memory used by Photoshop: 90 %

Image tile size: 128K

Image cache levels: 4

OpenGL Drawing: Enabled.

OpenGL Drawing Mode: Basic

OpenGL Allow Normal Mode: False.

OpenGL Allow Advanced Mode: False.

OpenGL Allow Old GPUs: Not Detected.

Video Card Vendor: VMware, Inc.

Video Card Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on SVGA3D; build: RELEASE; 

Display: 2

Display Bounds:=  top: 0, left: 1600, bottom: 1200, right: 3200

Display: 1

Display Bounds:=  top: 0, left: 0, bottom: 1200, right: 1600

Video Card Number: 1

Video Card: VMware SVGA 3D

OpenCL Unavailable

Driver Version: 7.14.1.1211

Driver Date: 20121003000000.000000-000

Video Card Driver: vm3dum64.dll,vm3dum,vm3dgl64.dll,vm3dgl

Video Mode: 1600 x 1200 x 4294967296 colors

Video Card Caption: VMware SVGA 3D

Video Card Memory: 128 MB

Video Rect Texture Size: 8192

Serial number: redacted

Application folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6 (64 Bit)\

Temporary file path: C:\TEMP\

Photoshop scratch has async I/O enabled

Scratch volume(s):

  C:\, 159.7G, 118.9G free

Required Plug-ins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6 (64 Bit)\Required\

Primary Plug-ins folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6 (64 Bit)\Plug-ins\

Additional Plug-ins folder: \\Noelc4\c\DEV\ProDigital\trunk\plugins\Output\Win\LastBuild\x64\

For what it's worth, there are even tricky ways to force it into Advanced mode, and that also seems to work on the VM, enabling such things as accelerated Liquify.

-Noel

[RedHelix2011]

I was able to bypass the issue by creating a new user profile, running Photoshop and allowing it to disable the settings in question, and then using the contents of "C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS6\Adobe Photoshop CS6 Settings" in a template profile so all users will have the setting disabled on first logon.

[Chris Cox]

You're working around a VMWare bug in their video drivers.  You still need to contact VMWare and see if they have updates, or if they need more information to fix the bug in their drivers.

[RedHelix2011]

Chris, I appreciate your attempts to be helpful but if you'll direct your eyeballs to the original post you'll find that a workaround is exactly what I was seeking.

[Chris Cox]

That error is not "expected": you have a driver with bugs.

You've got a workaround, but still need a solution.  Don't just stop at the workaround.

[RedHelix2011]

I'll be the judge of my VDI environment, thank you very much.   

[FCOETech]

Thank you, RH. We're running vSphere 5.1 and using a product Unidesk for building desktops. I just ran into this issue while layering CS6 Photoshop and Illustrator; adjusting this in the profile of the source image resolved the issue so we can resume use in production and continue researching alternatives. Much appreciated!