All Affinity apps freeze on document creation/open after updating to v2.1.1

[mikeyguy]

Hello,

I recently updated all three Affinity apps to v2.1.1.

I then tried to open a vector image in Affinity Designer, and it stopped responding while trying to load the image.

I waited about five minutes, then force quit the application.

I tried starting Designer on its own. It loaded up, but as soon as I tried to create a new image, it stopped responding again.

I tried the same tasks in the Affinity Photo app, and it behaved the same way.

I tried launching both apps with CTRL key held down, and left the default three options checked, but launching that way resulted in the same issue.

I also tried launching with hardware acceleration disabled, but had same issue.

PLEASE HELP!

- Michael

System Specs:
Windows 11 Build 22H2
Processor - AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor, 3.80 GHz
RAM - 32.0 GB
Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti (latest driver installed)
 

[mikeyguy]

UPDATE: I navigated to the Performance settings page in the Photo app and changed the Renderer to something called "WARP".
Now I'm able to load images and start new images without issue.

NOTE: I left the "OpenCL Compute Acceleration" option enabled.

I confirmed that this works for the other two apps as well.

It is frustrating that I cannot utilize my graphics card for this software currently, but hopefully that will be fixed soon.

Any insight on this situation would be appreciated.

[mikeyguy]

Just realized that I had posted in these forums about an issue back in Fall 2022 where I had a different issue, but it was also related to the software's inability to utilize my graphics card properly.

I really hope this graphics card utilization issue gets fixed soon.

To the devs - if you need any additional info from me to help troubleshoot, please let me know.

[Return]

I have a RTX3060ti and works as should with HA on.
Perhaps you can lower the RAM settings in the performance tab under settings to below the half of your total system RAM.

[stokerg]

Hi @mikeyguy,

I know you have the latest drivers installed but could you try doing a clean install of them and then try enabling HA and setting Affinity to use your graphics card to see if it then works. 

If you've installed the MSIX version do the following: Go to System>Display>Graphics.  There will be a list of installed apps in the 2nd part of this window.  If Affinity isn't listed, where it states Add an app at the top, change the dropdown from Desktop app to Microsoft Store app and then click on Browse.  You should now see the icon for Affinity Photo 2, click on this and then click on the Options button and set this to use your Nvidia card.

If you've installed the MSI version, follow the steps above but make sure the 1st dropdown is set to Desktop app and you may have to click the browse button to browse to where you install Affinity Photo, if its not shown in the list of apps.

 

 

 

[mikeyguy]

@stokerg@Return

I tried your suggestions and have all three apps set in Settings as you suggested (see screenshot).
I then did a clean install of the video drivers, per the directions from NVIDIA.
Finally, I changed the renderer back to my graphic cards for all three apps.

However, I am still having the same freezing issue when trying to load/create an image/project in all three apps.

Any additional suggestions?

[ChristAlix]

Also have the same problem with hardware acceleration (OpenCL) in combination with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 on my HP OMEN notebook.
Already invested several days in problem solving including installation of different driver versions and system optimization up to reinstallation of the operating system.  But no solution found :((

OS: Windows 11 Pro (10.0.22621 Build 22621)
Computer : HP OMEN 16-b0xxx (current bios F.44)
Processor: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H
RAM: 32GB
1st GPU: Intel UHD (current driver 30.0.101.2079)
2nd GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 (current driver 535.98)

What I haven't tried yet is installing the Affinity package as MSI (EXE) version. Until now I have installed only MSIX... But there I hope no improvement , maybe the general Performens, as described in the forum is but not at the OpenCL graphics acceleration....

 

[LGJ]

I'm having some issues with Affinity also with the latest version. I'm not sure if this is an Affinity issue or a driver issue. Using the GPU driver listed below, When I'm editing in Affinity and have music playing the music will skip and crackle while using any of the brushes (healing brush for example). When this happens, you can see a slight hesitation in the Affinity software when the brush is moved across the screen. You notice this mostly after selecting an area with alt and the first brush move after causes the issues. Now, using the latest Nvidia SE drivers causes Affinity to completely lock up my machine when saving or going into menus. I'm talking the system is totally frozen. The only way to correct is to do a hard rest by holding down the power button. Reverting back to the GPU driver below corrects the freeze but nothing else. I do not seem to have this issue with PS, Luminar AI, Capture 1, or Davinci Resolve. System specs below. 

Computer: ASUS Proart Studiobook 16 H7600ZW

Processor: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H   2.30 GHz

GPU: NVIDIA 3070TI Laptop GPU (512.15)

RAM: 32 GB 4800MHZ DDR5

OS: Windows Home 11 version 22H2 Build 22621.1928

 

[LGJ]

I spent a number of hours today uninstalling drivers and tying a number of things I found on the internet to fix the issue I'm having with Affinity Photo 2. In the end I could not fix it. worked the same project 5 times because Affinity Photo kept crashing. Out of curiosity I decided to install Affinity Photo 1 and surprise surprise I had zero issues. performance was back to normal, not a single crash, no sound crackling or stuttering while listening to music. Something is up with Affinity Photo 2 and I'm guessing it's the recent update as this problem just showed up. Funny thing is, my desktop PC with an older 1070 GPU and AMD 3800X GPU does not have this problem. I'll continue to use the older version of Affinity Photo on my laptop for now. 

Edited July 5, 2023 by LGJ

[stokerg]

Hi @mikeyguy, @ChristAlixand @LGJ,

A member of the Tech Team also has a 3070 Ti and is running the latest Nvidia Game Ready drivers and has no issue with openCL on the 3070 Ti.  So might be worth trying the Game Ready driver (making sure to do a clean install).

 

[LGJ]

8 hours ago, stokerg said:

Hi @mikeyguy, @ChristAlixand @LGJ,

A member of the Tech Team also has a 3070 Ti and is running the latest Nvidia Game Ready drivers and has no issue with openCL on the 3070 Ti.  So might be worth trying the Game Ready driver (making sure to do a clean install).

 

@stokerg I gave it a shot and it was a fail. Once I started using the healing brush tool the computer started skipping and it crashed. This was after a clean install as well. Again, Affinity Photo 1 works. Saves are pretty slow but I'll take that over full system lock up any day. 

[stokerg]

@LGJ Thanks for trying.

I'll have a word with our QA team and see if theres anything they can suggest.    When it crashes, is there is anything in your crash reports folder?  See here to find them.  You may have more than 1 crash report but ideally we need one from just after the crash happened.  If its a full system lock up, then i doubt one will be generated but its worth checking.  

[LGJ]

3 minutes ago, stokerg said:

@LGJ Thanks for trying.

I'll have a word with our QA team and see if theres anything they can suggest.    When it crashes, is there is anything in your crash reports folder?  See here to find them.  You may have more than 1 crash report but ideally we need one from just after the crash happened.  If its a full system lock up, then i doubt one will be generated but its worth checking.  

I’ll check for a crash report after work. The whole PC is locking up so not sure if there will be one. 

[mikeyguy]

On 7/7/2023 at 7:30 AM, stokerg said:

@LGJ Thanks for trying.

I'll have a word with our QA team and see if theres anything they can suggest.    When it crashes, is there is anything in your crash reports folder?  See here to find them.  You may have more than 1 crash report but ideally we need one from just after the crash happened.  If its a full system lock up, then i doubt one will be generated but its worth checking.  

I've attached the crash reports I have.

Crash reports.zip

[mikeyguy]

Any updates on this situation?

[RoSch]

I wasted a whole day troubleshooting to finally get Affinity V 2.1.1 to work. Unfortunately, the reference from the Affinity forum with the .NET 4.8x framework was unsuccessful.

All Affinity-programs (Photo, Designer, Publisher) seem to need the MS-Visual C++ 2015-2022 - Redistributable components, but they seem to forget to check if they are present during installation!

I installed the MS VC_redist.x64.exe (2015-2022) and now Affinity V 2.1.1  is running perfectly!

 

 

Maybe it may help ...........................

 

[LGJ]

6 hours ago, RoSch said:

I wasted a whole day troubleshooting to finally get Affinity V 2.1.1 to work. Unfortunately, the reference from the Affinity forum with the .NET 4.8x framework was unsuccessful.

All Affinity-programs (Photo, Designer, Publisher) seem to need the MS-Visual C++ 2015-2022 - Redistributable components, but they seem to forget to check if they are present during installation!

I installed the MS VC_redist.x64.exe (2015-2022) and now Affinity V 2.1.1  is running perfectly!

 

 

Maybe it may help ...........................

 

I gave this a go, but it did not resolve the issue for me. Affinity V2.1.1 still stutters and freezes. Appreciate the suggestion!

[mikeyguy]

On 8/15/2023 at 10:03 AM, RoSch said:

I wasted a whole day troubleshooting to finally get Affinity V 2.1.1 to work. Unfortunately, the reference from the Affinity forum with the .NET 4.8x framework was unsuccessful.

All Affinity-programs (Photo, Designer, Publisher) seem to need the MS-Visual C++ 2015-2022 - Redistributable components, but they seem to forget to check if they are present during installation!

I installed the MS VC_redist.x64.exe (2015-2022) and now Affinity V 2.1.1  is running perfectly!

 

Maybe it may help ...........................

I tried this and it actually seems to have fixed the issue after rebooting post install.

I was able switch the renderer back to my graphics card and it is cooperating.

I'll test it for the next week or so and report back if there is still any issues.

[natecombsmedia]

Curious if there are new issues/solutions or a best answer right now. Today, my edit section window vanished completely and will not open when I try to right click a page and select "Edit Section." That means I am permanently stuck with all info applied using that window, and nothing seems to fix it in public Publisher. So, I moved this project over to the 2.2 Beta and installed the latest update. Publisher Beta now crashes every 2-4 saves or so while saving. Pretty silly interruption to workflow.

I have a beast computer (Intel i9 12th gen, 3080 on the latest studio driver, 64 gigs of ram, 7 TB of storage, etc.), and I've already solved one major issue with the Books panel for myself and others this year...and I'm a bit tired this week. Would love some help before diverting a large amount of time into a smoother run. Thanks!

EDIT: Turns out if I let it sit a good 10 or so minutes, it will eventually process and continue on, and though I have only tried a couple times, saving on the "save as" menu and/or changing back and forth between documents seemed to get me a few extra saves.

[mikeyguy]

On 8/22/2023 at 12:28 AM, mikeyguy said:

I tried this and it actually seems to have fixed the issue after rebooting post install.

I was able switch the renderer back to my graphics card and it is cooperating.

I'll test it for the next week or so and report back if there is still any issues.

So this fix lasted until I rebooted my PC and then it went back to the same behavior where it freezes as soon as I load a project.

Hopefully devs can review those logs and come up with something as I’d prefer to stick with Affinity and not switch to something else…

[RoSch]

Which Anti-Virus-Software do you use?

[mikeyguy]

On 9/7/2023 at 5:24 PM, RoSch said:

Which Anti-Virus-Software do you use?

Bitdefender, but this issue started before I installed it.

[mikeyguy]

Good news!

I updated to v2.2.0 for all three apps recently.

I finally decided tonight to switch the renderer back from WARP to my graphics card for all three apps as well.

It actually seems to be working correctly now.

I'll test for a few more days and report back if any issues persist.