Affinity Photo is freezing when HW acceleration is ON

[ClaudeF]

Hi team !

I bought a new computer and Affinity Photo is now freezing when GPU acceleration in active on some operations about 15-20 seconds and creates a crash dump (the "classical" Failed to load Wintab32.dll already mentionned in this forum, sadly without any working solution). My computer is a brand new 11th gen i7 CPU with Intel Iris Xe GPU on Windows 10, all up to date (windows, drivers, ...).

An easy way to reproduce this issue is to launch Photo and to show the Styles panel (Display > Studio > Styles) : the computer freezes about 15-20 seconds if Iris Xe hardware acceleration is active, and displays instantly if it isn't. (don't forget to disable the panel or the HW acceleration before quitting Photo or the next launch will freeze 15-20 seconds ;-)

How can we solve this issue without disabling HW acceleration ?

Thanks,

Claude

[Komatös]

Hello @ClaudeF and welcome to the forums.

Hardware acceleration was introduced with version 1.9. Unfortunately, there are many hardware combinations with which hardware acceleration does not yet work properly.
The developers are certainly working hard to make hardware acceleration work on every hardware combination.

[Gabe]

Hi @ClaudeF,

Wintab32.dll only looks after tablet input has nothing do to with hardware acceleration. Do you use a tablet at all? 

[ClaudeF]

Hi @Gabe,

You are right, it's just the last line in the crash report

[Gabe]

Can you attach a crash report (if you have one, should be in %appdata%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\CrashReports\reports ) and a Task Manager dmp (when it hangs, Task Manager > right click on Affinity Photo > Create dump file)  ? 

 

[ClaudeF]

Hi Gabe,

Here is the crash report from Affinity folder after displaying the Styles Studio's window with HW acceleration on !

Thanks,

Claude

289d4391-8c5a-4f7e-94bf-886a23ab7869.dmp attachment_Log.txt

[Gabe]

I can't see anything obvious in the crash report. Try this for me please. With Photo closed, 

go to %appdata%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\user\ and rename objectstyles.propcol to objectstyles.propcol.old . Re-start Photo (with Hardware Acceleration ON) and see if it's fine. 

[ClaudeF]

Hi Gabe,

Sadly not, Photo freezes 15-20 seconds before displaying the Styles window, as usual.

Note that the freeze problem doesn't occur only with the Styles window, it's just an easy way to reproduce it. The issue can occur at any moment making any operation (like applying a blur filter for instance).

Claude

[Gabe]

How about renaming the entire 1.0 folder to 1.0.old? 

[ClaudeF]

Same issue ... but I noticed something : it's the display of the Styles window which causes the freeze, not the loading.

1) if I activate HW acceleration and display the Styles window and then restart Photo, it freezes 15-20 seconds before I can work.

2) if I do the same but select another Studio's tab (for instance Effects) before restarting Photo, it doesn't freeze at startup ... but freezes when I select the Styles tab in the right panel in order to display it.

After that, I was asked to automatically accept to send crash report. I accepted, so perhaps have you got some additional informations.

Claude

[Komatös]

Hello @ClaudeF

Can you please check if there are any damaged Windows system components? To do this, right-click on the Windows Start icon, select CMD (Administrator). Type sfc /scannow and press Enter.

[ClaudeF]

Hi @Komatös

Nope, all is OK (fortunately, it's a brand new PC 😉).

Claude

[Komatös]

OK, I don't give up  

Wintab32.dll, i.e. a function interface belonging to the Wacom driver, is involved in the cause of the error. Can you please deactivate the tablet support in the device manager for a test and then start APhoto?

If it now works with activated hardware acceleration, please check with Wacom whether there are newer drivers. You'll find the device manager in an easy way if you right click the Windows start icon. Navigate to input devices.

 

[ClaudeF]

Me neither 😄

I have no Wacom (or other) tablet in the device manager ...

[Gabe]

I'm afraid there's not much we can try at this point. For the meantime, it would either be ON and having to deal with the 15-20sec hang, or have it OFF. Sorry

[ClaudeF]

Hi Gabe,

Thanks for your answer, I keep my fingers crossed for a future update compatible with Iris Xe GPU 😉

Claude