Affinity Photo 1.6 no longer launches when connected to Internet

[Granddaddy]

Affinity Photo 1.6 fails to launch when my computer is connected to the Internet. The launch aborts with an unhandled exception error. Disconnecting my Ethernet cable allowed Ver 1.6 to launch. I then plugged in the Internet cable again and Ver 1.6 continued to function.

During launch, APhoto indicated that it was loading fonts and then it aborted. Perhaps something to do with APhoto phoning home during launch?

I wonder if Ver 1.6 can still be installed on an Internet-connected computer. 

[carl123]

Out of interest, any reason you are still on Ver 1.6?

Ver 1.7.3 has been out for ages and Ver 1.8.0 was released this week (both free upgrades)

7 hours ago, Granddaddy said:

I wonder if Ver 1.6 can still be installed on an Internet-connected computer. 

Yes, I just fired up my old copy of 1.6 and it loads fine when connected to the Internet.

 

[Granddaddy]

@carl123: Thanks for checking whether Ver 1.6 can still be installed on an Internet-connected computer. 

Checking again this morning, APhoto 1.6 still failed to launch as described in my original post when my computer is connected to the Internet. I filled out the Error Report form that pops up when the launch fails. Sadly when I tried to send the report it returned an error (500) Internal Server Error.

I disconnected the Ethernet cable and tried to launch APhoto 1.6 again as I did yesterday. This time it again failed to launch with an unhandled exception error, whereas yesterday it did launch when not connected to the Internet. I can verify that because I have the files I saved with it yesterday. 

Then I reconnected the Ethernet cable and to my surprise APhoto 1.6  launched successfully. So I exited APhoto, disconnected the Ethernet cable and tried again to launch Ver 1.6 but it failed with the unhandled exception error.

So now it remains a puzzlement. I have an intermittent failure to launch problem whether or not the computer is connected to the Internet.

For now I shall have to leave this be, remembering that some computer problems are not worth tracking down so long as you can bang on the pipes enough to get things flowing again.

======================

You asked why I still have Ver 1.6 running. It's installed on one of my older computers that I was using when I bought Ver 1.6 in October 2017. Shortly thereafter I bought a new computer, installed 1.6 on it, then upgraded that computer to Ver 1.7 and discovered on day 1 the huge increase in afphoto file sizes. So I kept Ver 1.6 installed on the older computer for future comparisons, which continue to be useful as indicated in some of my posts from yesterday.

We live in a world that has forgotten not only how to do things but also forgotten that it was ever possible to do some things at all. Keeping old software around provides perspective, such as happened yesterday when someone said it is impossible to have afphoto files that are barely larger than the original jpg file. Of course that is certainly not impossible because two years ago small afphoto files was a selling feature of APhoto.

Thanks again for taking an interest in my post. 

Edited February 29, 2020 by Granddaddy
Added information after further testing.

[John Rostron]

Have you tried re-installing AP 1.6, either from the install file you downloaded, or a fresh download?

John

[Granddaddy]

Before reinstalling I'm going to play with it a bit, just out of curiosity.

I just tried it again today while connected to the Internet. The first two times APhoto 1.6 launched successfully. The third and fourth tries failed. The fifth try was successful, 6th failed, 7th successful. I closed the application after each try and waited a bit to let everything calm down between launch attempts. 

Then I disconnected the Ethernet cable and tried launching again. The first time it launched successfully, then failed three times in a row, then launched successfully on the fifth attempt.

I also tried right-clicking Run as Administrator. Made no difference. Sometimes it launches, sometimes it fails with the unhandled exception.

I don't recall encountering behavior like this with any software in 35 years of desktop computing and at one time supporting users on 300 computers in my workplace.

So now it is an interesting puzzle with my computer rather than a problem with APhoto, for which I am glad. APhoto has been wonderfully stable through the past three years I've been using it through three versions. But my computer also has been stable, so I'm wondering what changed to cause this problem now. Perhaps something in a Windows upgrade. I haven't installed any other new software on it in a couple of years as it is not my main computer.

I'll root around a bit to see if I can figure out what is happening before I resort to reinstalling. I do have my original installation file affinity-photo-1.6.5.123.exe from 8/24/2018 (I originally purchased APhoto on 10/30/2017). I always save old software. 

Then again, it's income tax time in the States and I'm always looking for a distraction. So maybe I'll just stop playing and reinstall Ver 1.6 on Monday. If it works after that, great. If the problem persists then I'll find it interesting to investigate.

[Granddaddy]

To summarize: APhoto 1.6 fails to launch randomly on 50% of the tries whether or not the computer is connected to the Internet. During launch, APhoto first displays the splash screen with a message that says Loading fonts... Then a message box pops up displaying an unhandled exception error. Clicking the OK button displays the Crash Reporter. Filling out and submitting the form returns a remote server error: (500) Internal Server Error.

This failure occurs on a computer that had been running Ver 1.6 without problems since it was installed in 8/2018 shortly after that version became available.  This is a secondary computer that I use from time to time for scanning photos and slides. I have not installed any new software on it other than Windows Updates in the past year or so. I think I last used Ver 1.6 without problems on this computer in 6/2019 when I was comparing Ver 1.6 file sizes with those produced by the newly released Ver 1.7 that I had just installed on my newer (production) computer. It was on testing file sizes on 2/28/2020 that I first experienced Ver 1.6 problems on this computer.

On Monday 3/2/2020, I did a clean install of APhoto 1.6 on this computer. APhoto Ver 1.6 still exhibits the failure to launch error following a clean install.

On Tuesday 3/3/2020, I installed APhoto Ver 1.6 on my 3rd computer on which neither APhoto nor any other Serif product had ever been installed. That installation launched successfully 10 times in a row.

Thus, APhoto Ver 1.6 randomly fails to launch 50% of the time on only one of my computers. At this point I'm at a loss to understand why the failure occurs. 

However, I wonder if my launch problem with Ver 1.6 is related to similar problems with Ver 1.8 failing to launch on some computers as described at
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/108405-startprobleme-affinity-photo-18/
and
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/108832-18-wont-start/
and
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/108649-affinity-180585-will-not-open/

where Moderators indicate that developers are speculating there might be a font problem.

[Leigh]

Sounds very similar. Are you able to send me a copy of Event Viewer Logs via PM and i'll take a look.

 

[Granddaddy]

Continuing my saga: On Tuesday 3/3, I did not turn on my test computer running Ver 1.6.

On Wednesday 3/4, I successfully launched APhoto Ver 1.6 ten times over a period of a few hours without any problems. Similarly this morning on Thursday 3/5.

Thus, my failure to launch problem with Ver 1.6 on this particular computer that began on Friday 2/28 and persisted for four days has now gone away and I have no idea why. I have not made any changes to this computer since the failures last occurred on Tuesday 3/2. 

I will upload to @Leigh my event logs from 3/1 and 3/2 when I had 8 failures to launch, but I don't see anything suggestive in them. 

[Leigh]

@Granddaddy I've replied to your PM.

[Granddaddy]

Event logs are uploaded. Thanks.