Can't open Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher

[deannab]

basically have to reinstall these apps every time i want to use them.

using windows 10 on a surface book. when i click on the icon nothing happens. no error, just like it's not installed at all.

please help; this is turning into a nightmare.

thank you

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, deannab said:

basically have to reinstall these apps every time i want to use them.

So they only run once after you install them? And if you quit the application it won't run again?

Or do they run for some period of time, then stop working?

[deannab]

more like they run until i shut the computer down. sometimes it will work for a couple days.

[walt.farrell]

Strange. One possibility is that you may have some cleanup software running on your system that is deleting some critical files.

Can you give us more information on your system? Windows release that you're running, kind of CPU and Graphics cards, etc.?

When you run the install, where do you tell the installer to put the application?

[deannab]

Device name    DESKTOP-9JDUADT
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.30GHz   1.50 GHz
Installed RAM    32.0 GB (31.6 GB usable)
Device ID    63FA3D28-A558-4B0F-BE1D-AEA8EFAB3312
Product ID    00342-23809-13684-AAOEM
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch    Pen and touch support with 10 touch points

Edition    Windows 10 Home
Version    21H2
Installed on    ‎11/‎12/‎2021
OS build    19044.1469
Serial number    012334111057
Experience    Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3920.0

installed in C:\Program Files\Affinity

 

[Dan C]

Hi @deannab,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble, this is certainly a strange issue you're reporting here!

Can you please provide a screenshot of the exact file you're selecting to run Affinity? It sounds as though you may be using the installer .exe, rather than the actual application itself?

As Walt has mentioned:

On 1/28/2022 at 10:17 PM, walt.farrell said:

One possibility is that you may have some cleanup software running on your system that is deleting some critical files.

Do you have any such software on your computer please?

Many thanks in advance

[deannab]

right? welcome to my life 🙃

don't usually use a file to start it. start it and then open the file. only have publisher installed at the moment, and it's still starting after a day with the laptop turned off. good chance i will be needing photo today so will be reinstalling that.

running a full suite of iobit security and maintenance software. think i will run the maintenance program to see if it still starts after that. thanks for the idea, will report back.

[deannab]

the affinity apps indeed did not start after i ran the iobit maintenance. is there information here to correct it? will go check with iobit too.

thanks again for the idea

[walt.farrell]

I am not personally familiar with iobit, so I can't comment much. But I think there are at least two other problem reports from iobit users who had problems with Affinity.

What did you tell it to do?

Does it produce a report of what it did? If so, what does the report say?

[deannab]

here is the report from the iobit diagnostic tool. have reported to them but too soon for a reply.

IObit_Debug_Info.zip

[walt.farrell]

Sorry; that doesn't help me.

A log of what it cleaned up would be nice, but I think that's probably a different report.

[deannab]

here are the ASC logs from today

ASCLog-2022-02-01(12-36-31).txt ASCLog-2022-02-01(13-16-02).txt ASCLog-2022-02-01(13-17-37).txt ASCLog-2022-02-01(13-23-27).txt

[walt.farrell]

Thanks. None of those seem to show any significant deletions related to Affinity.

Any other logs?

[deannab]

there are a lot of logs, but browsed a couple and nothing looks connected to affinity either.

FYI ... it's not starting at all now, even with a fresh installation

[Ron P.]

I think what Dan C wants  a screenshot of, is the file you're clicking on to launch the app, Photo, Designer or Publisher. He thinks you're clicking on the installation file, which is used to install the apps, not launch them. They have different names. For example to launch Affinity Photo, you should be clicking on the Photo.exe file. If you're clicking on the file affinity-photo-1.10.4.exe, that's the installation file.

[Dan C]

Thanks for the further information provided, Ron P. above is correct - I wanted to ensure you are launching Affinity correctly.

However if you're attempting to open Affinity from the Start Menu / Desktop Shortcut, and the app is not showing, then we're going to need some Event Viewer logs from your computer to better understand the cause of this.

Please try launching the app once more, then do the following -

1. Open Windows Run (Windows Key + R) and type the following - eventvwr
2. In the window that opens, select the Windows Logs drop-down list on the left and then Applications
3. With the Applications logs selected, navigate to the right side of the window and select Save All Events As ... and save them as .evtx (the default option).
4. Attach this saved file to your reply here.

Many thanks once again

[deannab]

hi!

yes, i know how to open an app as opposed to installing it. double checked the links on my shortcuts to make sure they were correct.

here is the file you asked for. am pretty sure it has something to do with running iobit maintenance. it seems to work fine until i do that.

thanks

db_20220202.evtx

[Dan C]

No problem at all, many thanks for the file provided!

I can see the application is crashing when accessing .NET - as well as a few other apps are erroring when trying to access .NET

Firstly I'd recommend running the Microsoft .NET repair tool from the below link, then restart your PC and try opening Affinity once again -

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=30135

If this doesn't change the behaviour, then it may be a third party application causing this that we've not previously seen before.

I can see in your event-viewer log that 'XvUtil.exe' also crashed when accessing .NET and from my research this appears to be part of Express VPN - so if the repair does not work, please force close Express VPN and try launching the app once again.

Does this resolve the issue for you please?

[deannab]

finally have a day where it didn't run when i started the computer. i did force close express VPN and then all three started; even after i turned it back on. so far that looks like where the issue is. gonna run maintenance again just to be sure that doesn't trigger anything.

[deannab]

after a bunch of back and forth with expressVPN, i learned of a setting called split tunneling, which tells certain programs not to use the VPN. that seems to have taken care of it.

[deannab]

am back with the same problem still. the split tunneling only seems to work for a little while as well. back to having to reinstall nearly every time i use it. the split tunneling setting changes itself to use the VPN instead of block the VPN. these apps seem to have problems communicating with expressVPN. have let them know about the issue as well.

[walt.farrell]

8 hours ago, deannab said:

back to having to reinstall nearly every time i use it.

Earlier you said you could force-close the VPN. That seems like a better solution than reinstalling the applications.

[deannab]

closing the VPN didn't work. think it was an update issue. still had to repair the app in order to get it to run afterward. going again. we'll see for how long.

part of the issue when the problem started again was that the VPN switch those programs in settings on its own from don't use the VPN to always use the VPN. has happened a couple of times now.

[deannab]

aaaannnnnndddd i'm back to the apps not opening no matter the state of the VPN

[walt.farrell]

Purely as a guess, you might check the list of third-party applications that are known to cause issues.