[FAQ] What to do if Affinity is failing to start, crashes on startup or the UI is not displaying correctly (Windows).

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If you're trying to start an Affinity app but it's failing to start, crashing on startup or the user interface is not displaying correctly, please check out our list of issues caused by Third Party apps: Issues Caused By Third Party Software

The most common issues from the list are caused by the following apps:

• RivaTuner: Affinity crashes on startup
• Duet Display: The user interface is not shown, other than a portion of the welcome window, and the document
• FastPictureViewer Coded Pack: Affinity crashes on startup
• D3DGear: Crash when creating or opening a document
• Actual Windows Manager: Affinity crashes on startup ***( Unverified but reported by a user in this forum post )***
• Graphics Card Drivers: See below

If you don't have any of the Third Party apps listed in the above link and the app is still crashing, please start a new thread and attach your crash report  - this will allow our support team to investigate your issue further. You can find out more information about crash reports in our Where to find Crash Reports FAQ.

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Out of date Graphics Card Drivers:

Another reason why our apps fail to start or crash on startup is because the drivers for your Graphics Card are out of date. Please make sure that you always have the latest Graphics Card drivers installed for your integrated Graphics Card and any Dedicated Graphics Card you may have installed in your machine.

If your machine has both an Integrated Graphics Card and a Dedicated Graphics Card, you can choose which one is used within our apps by going to Edit > Preferences > Performance and selecting the relevant Graphics Card (GPU) from the Renderer dropdown menu. However, if there's a problem with the drivers for the selected Graphics Card (GPU) when you next run Affinity, the app will crash or fail to start.

If Affinity is failing to start or crashes on startup and you don't know which Graphics Card (GPU) was last used by the app, press the Windows Key + R to launch the Run dialog and enter the relevant app path:

• %AppData%\Affinity\Designer\1.0\
• %AppData%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\
• %AppData%\Affinity\Publisher\1.0\

In this folder you will find a Log.txt file. If you open this file in Notepad you will notice under the Monitors section that the last used Adapter is listed. This is the Graphics Card (GPU) our app is trying to use. Luckily, within Windows it's possible to force our apps to use either your Integrated Graphics Card or Dedicated Graphics Card when you next run the app. Please read our How can I force Affinity to use my dedicated GPU? FAQ for more information.