Affinity Publisher Closes without Error when opening afpub file

[WolfgangErnst]

Hi, 

a colleague of mine has a fresh installation of Affinity Publisher on Windows 10 and it crashes without a message as soon as we try to open a document. It even crashes when we create a new document. The document appears briefly, then, after a fraction of a second, Publisher crashes.

Greetings,

Wolfgang

[Dan C]

Hi @WolfgangErnst,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

Please note I have split your post to a new thread, you may want to 'Follow' this new thread to be notified of further replies here.

3 hours ago, WolfgangErnst said:

it crashes without a message as soon as we try to open a document. It even crashes when we create a new document. The document appears briefly, then, after a fraction of a second, Publisher crashes.

Your report sounds like the GPU drivers may be at fault here. Our latest update implemented OpenCL Hardware Acceleration to Windows, which utilises your Graphics Card to help render the Affinity document.
A few users are experiencing issues with this enabled, the number one cause of which is outdated Graphics Card drivers. Please visit the manufactures link below to download the latest driver available -

- Intel: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/detect.html 
- Nvidia: https://www.geforce.com/drivers
- AMD: https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-driver-autodetect

Note: you may need to go direct to your PC manufactures website for the driver, if you see a warning regarding 'OEM drivers' when trying to install one from the above sites.

Once downloaded and installed, please restart your computer and then launch the Affinity app again. Does this stop the app from crashing?

If this does not resolve the issue, please navigate to Edit > Preferences > Performance and untick Hardware Acceleration at the bottom of the dialog. Restart the Affinity app as prompted and then try creating a new document once more - does this resolve the crashing  for you please?

[WolfgangErnst]

Hi Dan C,

thank you for your extensive information.

Unfortunately, neither updating the Intel GPU driver nor unticking Hardware Acceleration helped to resolve the issue. Publisher still crashes when we create a new document.

I attach today’s most recent crash report.

0f381b52-ee05-4545-b8a1-42b542b61693.dmp

Edited July 1, 2021 by WolfgangErnst

[Dan C]

Thanks for trying that for me and I'm sorry to hear this hasn't helped!

It appears from your crash report that the application is struggling to interpret your Windows Time / Date format.

Can you please open Windows Settings, then Time & Language, in the top right corner you should see Date, time & regional formatting, select this option and then provide a screenshot of the settings here for me?

Many thanks once again

[WolfgangErnst]

Thanks for analysing the crash report.

I enclose five screenshots. I hope they help resolve the issue.

Greetings

Wolfgang

[Dan C]

Many thanks for your screenshots - I've setup a VM here with the same settings and I'm able to launch Affinity correctly, so we may be missing a setting or it may be another cause on your device which crashes Affinity.

Can you please open Windows Updates and ensure no updates are pending? We've seen this previously stop the app from being able to launch correctly and the crash reports can be rather unreliable when this is the case, hence the potential 'misdirection'!

[WolfgangErnst]

Thank you for your reply and for testing on a VM, Dan!

We have checked for updates. All updates seem to have been downloaded and installed.

However, I was wondering if Affinity Publisher was installed correctly. As a Mac user, I have no idea if Windows permits installing an app outside the Programs directory and what side effects it might have if you do so. So please check the screenshot of the Publisher folder. Please note that its path contains the Umlaut "ü".

[Dan C]

Many thanks for confirming that for me!

8 hours ago, WolfgangErnst said:

However, I was wondering if Affinity Publisher was installed correctly. As a Mac user, I have no idea if Windows permits installing an app outside the Programs directory and what side effects it might have if you do so. So please check the screenshot of the Publisher folder. Please note that its path contains the Umlaut "ü".

That's certainly an interesting theory, I've not personally heard of such an install location causing the app to crash - but I definitely wouldn't rule this out, so I'm checking with our dev/QA team now to see if this could cause issues known to us.

The install location itself looks a little strange to me, the default location on Windows is:

C:\Program Files\Affinity\Publisher

When installing the Affinity app, did you include this as a custom install location? I can also see the name of this folder in your C Drive matches the name of the E Drive, did you originally install the app on a different drive and then copy/move this folder to your C drive?

[WolfgangErnst]

Thanks for your answer.

Publisher was not moved after installation. Would it make sense to uninstall and re-install the app in its default location?

[Dan C]

7 hours ago, WolfgangErnst said:

Publisher was not moved after installation. Would it make sense to uninstall and re-install the app in its default location?

Thanks for letting me know! I certainly would recommend this, as this may be what's causing the app to close without an error shown. Please do let us know how you get on here

[WolfgangErnst]

Many thanks, Dan, for encouraging us to reinstall Publisher.

Problem resolved :-)