[Bug] Affinity Photo broken menus/tools/everything -> disappearing and wraping

[Furexus]

Hey everybody,

I really love affinity photo, but I encountered a really strange issue with it. Clickboxes, Menu Items, Tool-Icons, they all keep disappearing or wraping. I've attached two screenshots to show the effect. Even though they disappear, they are still useable, but working with affinity is atm near impossible for me.

Did that only happen to me? I'm on windows 10 and an automatic update happend, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it. Besides that I haven't changed anything in affinity photo/illustrator/publisher or the PC as a whole.

Would really appreciate feedback!

Thank you!

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Furexus said:

Would really appreciate feedback!

Take a look at the list of 3rd-party software that can cause weird issues:

If you have any (especially ASUS Sonic / MSI Nahemic or similar) try stopping them or taking the actions indicated in that list.

[Furexus]

Hey, thanks!

I've already checked that list and I don't use any software mentioned there. (also no ASUS Sonic / MSI Nahemic or similar). Sorry, should have mentioned this. Anything else I can do?

[Furexus]

Hey, some more information: I tried setting the render modus to WARP (instead of my Gefore 2080TI), but I still have the issue. I also tried to redownload affinity photo and repair it; still the same issue.

[Furexus]

And another update on this: Just installed the latest graphic card driver, restarted windows, issue still present. I'm going crazy.

Edited July 10, 2021 by Furexus

[walt.farrell]

How about ASUS GPU Tweak III, which another user mentioned earlier today.

 

[Furexus]

I don't have this software installed...

[Furexus]

So, I tried some other methods, which all failed, still got the issue. Things I tried:

• Installed the affinity photo beta
• Tweaked some settings in the nvidia control panel, but nothing worked. Keep in mind that I *don't* even have the infamous "Optimize for Compute Performance" setting, as this setting isn't available for my graphics card to begin with
• Tried compatibility settings for different windows versions, running as admin, fullscreen optimizations, DPI settings (I tried all combinations here, none worked, also my DPI is at 100%, so no modification here)

I'm totally lost.

[Furexus]

Ok, it seems like I've solved the issue. Even though I don't have ASUS Sonic / MSI Nahemic, I tried starting the application with "--no-hw-ui" and that seems to have fixed the problem.

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, Furexus said:

Ok, it seems like I've solved the issue. Even though I don't have ASUS Sonic / MSI Nahemic, I tried starting the application with "--no-hw-ui" and that seems to have fixed the problem.

That may have other effects you won't like, though. But it's good to know it worked. Thanks.

Have you checked your Preferences in the Affinity application, and looked at the Performance settings to see if Hardware Acceleration (OpenCL) is enabled? If it is, you might try disabling it, closing Preferences, and then seeing if it works when you start the application again. Don't specify --no-hw-ui. It would be odd for the Hardware Acceleration to be involved, but it has caused some other odd things.

[Furexus]

Hey, yeah, I'm aware that this might have unintended side effects. That being said, I tried to disable OpenCL in Performance settings, as the box was ticked, but unticking it and restarting affinity photo (without --no-hw-ui) unfortuntely resulted in the same problem. I will gladly try other things to resolve the problem in a more elegant way. Thanks!

[walt.farrell]

Thanks for trying the experiment.

I still suspect you have some other 3rd-party application causing your problem, especialy if you have any applications that enhance audio or graphics, but that's purely a guess. Another experiment would be to look for everything else that is running and selectively stop them and see if the problem clears up. If it does, you know which application is doing it. I would start with items that are on the taskbar or in the system tray.

[Furexus]

Hey, just a quick update. Turns out that I did have a process named Nahimic installed. Quitting these processes (NahimicSvc32/64/Service) leads to affinity photo functioning normal, solving the issue. Problem is that these processes reappear as soon quitted, so that I will have to go to quite extensive lengths to remove this drive catastrophe from my system. First problem for me atm is that there is no Nahimic Mirror-Driver in device manager. Isn't there an easy way with no commando promt stuff to remove this? Doesn't seem so.

For now, I will go with  --no-hw-ui and maybe take a day off to fix this Nahimic mess. Thanks for your help!

Edited July 11, 2021 by Furexus

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, Furexus said:

Problem is that these processes reappear as soon quitted,

 

You could try:

1. Click on the Windows Start icon.
2. Type Computer Management, and choose the Computer Management app when it appears in the list.
3. Click on Services on the left panel, then scroll down to Nahimic in the right panel, right-click on it, and choose Properties:
   
   
    
4. In the Properties dialog, change the "Startup type" to Disabled.
   
    
5. Then OK to close that dialog. If the service is still running, right-click on it again and choose Stop.

[Furexus]

Thanks, I will try that!

[kokoro]

I'm having the same issue, and I tried disabling Nahimic, but I am still having the same error.

[Komatös]

Hello @kokoroI suggest to update the grapics card driver.

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, kokoro said:

I'm having the same issue, and I tried disabling Nahimic, but I am still having the same error.

Did you disable it completely, including the Nahimic Service that may be running in the background? My post above has details for doing that.

[kokoro]

Yes, I did exactly that. I tried the --no-hw-ui fix, and that seemed to work.

 

Edit: To clarify, I tried disabling Hardware Acceleration through preferences and Nahimic as shown in your above post. I didn't realize the original post was for Affinity Photo, but I am having this issue in Affinity Designer and that is the program the --no-hw-ui fixed my bug problem in.

Edited July 24, 2021 by kokoro

[IanSG]

It looks like disabling Nahimic is non-trivial and the method depends on which OS edition you're running.  More details here.

[Chris Scan]

Dear all.

I have this exact bug as shown in the screenshot above. 

I have recently re-built my PC moving from AMD A8 to Ryzen 5, Motherboard now a Asus ROG B550. I kept my trusty Radeon RX550 (can't get new GPU anyway at present).

This problem appeared after this. I did a clean install of Windows 10 so it could be related to latest upgrade? Or the services that I now have with the new hardware?

I have Nahimic, I tried to disable it and this made GPU crash badly. 

I can't set --no-hw-ui as I have Affinity Photo and Designer purchased via App Store. This means I can't modify how they launch.

I have run out of ideas. It is workable with,  but really annoying for work flow. Please can a developer try and look at this?

Any other ideas gratefully received

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Chris Scan said:

I have Nahimic, I tried to disable it and this made GPU crash badly. 

That is surprising, as Nahimic is related to audio, not graphics, as far as I can tell.

[Chris Scan]

12 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

That is surprising, as Nahimic is related to audio, not graphics, as far as I can tell.

So the specifics of the crash were. 

Disable Nahimic

Main monitor then would not work (1440p on display port). Had to use my graphics tablet (1080p) on hdmi from same gpu 

I could see lots of amd driver error messages 

Re-enabled Nahimic

Everything works again.

My audio to my monitor is via the display port on my gpu, so this may be why I got this issue?

But I'm still stuck that none of the solutions to fix Affinity work for me.

Not sure what to try next?

 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Chris Scan said:

Not sure what to try next?

Complain to MSI, and see if they can suggest something?

I haven't yet experienced this problem with Nahimic, though it is installed and running on my laptop. I hope I don't start having it.

[IanSG]

21 hours ago, Chris Scan said:

This problem appeared after this. I did a clean install of Windows 10 so it could be related to latest upgrade? Or the services that I now have with the new hardware?

I have Nahimic, I tried to disable it and this made GPU crash badly. 

I'm assuming a "clean install" means that Nahimic wasn't included - how did it get onto your system?

It doesn't seem reasonable that the GPU would crash because Nahimic was disabled - it sounds more like it was, in effect, misconfigured.  What did you do to disable it?