Designer constantly force closes - completely unusable (Win10)

[jibbitt]

I installed the trial of Affinity Designer, in hope of finding something to replace Illustrator/Inkscape. It looks like a really interesting bit of software. I say 'looks like', as I've never had it run on my system for longer than about 30 seconds. It completely closes without warning a few seconds in (sometimes this happens immediately after the splash screen, so it doesn't even get to the window).

I am running Windows 10.

What I've tried:

• Fully updating Windows.
• Trying with and without graphics tablet connected.
• Turning off hardware acceleration (took a few tries as it was closing too fast to get to the menu several times).
• Checking to make sure I'm not running any software on the list of problem applications.
• Restarting several times (and closing as much background stuff as possible).
• Running in Windows compatibility mode.
• Running as administrator.

Nothing has changed things.

I have only 2 crash dumps in the folder, but I'm getting force closes all over the place. Literally impossible to even try out currently.

When I open the crash dumps in VS, they both show the following exception:

The thread tried to read from or write to a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access.

Is anyone able to help?

 

 

[stokerg]

Hi @jibbittand Welcome to the Forums,

Can you first just try starting the app while holding down the CTRL key and you should get a popup asking if you'd like to reset some settings and 3 options will be ticked and you can just click on Clear.  Does Affinity then and stay open?

Also could you attach the crash dump file you found and i can get them looked at.  One final thing, in this location:
%APPDATA%\Affinity\Designer\1.0\

There should be a file called log.txt, could you also attach that?  To get to the above location, call up the Windows Run box by holding down the Windows key and tapping the letter R.  Then copy and past the above path into the Run Box and click okay.

[jibbitt]

Hi @stokerg, thanks for your response.

Please see the attached files, as requested.

I tried the CTRL step as advised but, unfortunately, there was no change.

Many thanks.

Log.txt 686d40fd-5f07-4485-92f3-7f938a1e2085.dmp

[stokerg]

32 minutes ago, jibbitt said:

Please see the attached files, as requested.

 

Thank you.  Just going to check the DMP file out now.

One thing i notice from your log.txt you have a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card and an Intel UHD Graphics 630.  It would be worth doing a clean of install of the drivers for the cards, as this will likely be a graphics card crash.  There was crash picked up with Intel cards but it did only apply for when Hardware Acceleration was enabled, disabling it should stop it from crashing on startup.  More on that can be found here 

 

[jibbitt]

Hi there. I tried a number of different things, as advised, including testing the waters with Photo (which had the same issues). In the end, I resigned myself to not being able to use Affinity until I entirely change hardware in the future.

I have since, however, made some changes to my environment, including fresh installs of graphics drivers etc. I really do want to become an Affinity customer (I'm trying really hard to be!) - as I do like the look of your products.

My current problem is that my trial has now expired on the product, so I cannot test my new setup. Is there any way I can have the trial refreshed, so I can see if I will be able to use it now?

 

Many thanks.

 

[jibbitt]

Never mind my request. I tried Publisher with the (perhaps unreliable) assumption that, as Designer and Photo had the same issue, Publisher would be likely to have it also.

With my new setup, there was no issue with Publisher, which gave me some confidence. I decided to bite the bullet and purchase Designer (and figured aftersales would be able to assist if my hunch was wrong).

So far, it has worked beautifully and I am quite impressed by the UI and QoL features. Here's hoping everything keeps working this well!