Publisher won't start up

[John35]

Can someone please help. Just over a week ago I used Affinity Publisher with no problem. Today I cannot get it to start up.

I click the start up icon and the first screen appears showing "loading fonts". However it then disappears and nothing happens. The same problem occurs if I try to "run as administrator"

After several attempts I used Windows to uninstall it and I then reinstalled it from the original "affinity-publisher-1.8.5.exe"

However it still will not start up - disappearing after the "loading fonts" screen

[The only thing that I am aware that has changed on the computer was today installing the latest Windows update file KB4592438.]

I also tried uninstalling using the Microsoft troubleshooting tool. However after reinstalling Publisher it will still not run.

Edited December 13, 2020 by John35
Additional info.

[walt.farrell]

If you've recently had a Windows update, then perhaps:

 

[John35]

Many thanks I have now checked the colour profile and it is already set to sRGB IEC61966-2.1.

Out of interest, both Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer both start up and run OK.

It is only Affinity Publisher that will not start up.

So the colour profile cannot be the cause of the problem?

PS - I also tried starting Publisher in Windows Safe Mode but still the same problem!

Edited December 13, 2020 by John35
Update

[John35]

Eureka!!

Overnight I thought about my last use of Publisher and remembered that I had updated its assets file just before closing and wondered if that might have become corrupted.

I checked the assets.propcol file [C/Users/(username)/Appdata/Roaming/Affinity/Publisher/1.0/User/assets.propcol] and noticed that all of the .propcol files had old dates on them and had not been deleted/changed even though I had deleted and reloaded the Publisher App.

I saved a backup of the old assets.propcol file and then deleted it from the above location.

Success!! - Publisher then started quickly and ran OK (albeit with no assets shown). To double check this , I replaced the new, now empty, assets.propcol file with the old one and, again, Publisher would not start up.

When that file was deleted again, Publisher started up and runs OK.

I publish this as it may help other users.

But why does deleting the App not delete the old user files??

[John35]

Further problem with assets.propcol !!

Can someone please explain this peculiar happening.

As per my previous entry - Publisher starts up and runs once I have deleted the 'corrupt' assets.propcol file.

I have a large assets file on the Photo App and I copied this into the Publisher users file replacing the new empty file.

Publisher then starts up and runs OK and shows all the assets that I have imported from Photo. So far so good.

However, when I close Publisher and try to reopen it, the original problem reoccurs. I then check the user files and, for some unknown reason the imported Photo assets.propcol file has been replaced with the original 'corrupt' file which I had deleted.

How can this possibly happen? How can deleted files suddenly reappear and override the file I had copied?

Note that the deleted items still appear in the Recycle bin.