Can't open any files to work on

[Izzy Bizzy]

I have been using Affinity Designer and Photo for several months now and now have a recurring problem. This has happened before. Every so often, I will try opening a png file on my computer to download to work on it. It will not open it at all. When trying to open it from the app, it opens up my file explorer page and when I click on the png file, it just freezes up and just sits there. After a few seconds, the screen says it is not responding. All I can do is close the program. I can open existing or recent files on the app but not a new jpg, png or any file. At the top of the page it just says it is not responding, and all I can do is close out the program. I'm trying to work on my new clients logos and can not proceed. Help!!

[NathanC]

Welcome to the forums @Izzy Bizzy,

To confirm, when you file > open the image and the freeze occurs, is it the file explorer window that becomes unresponsive, or does it get past this point and it's Designer/Photo that becomes unresponsive? If you have file explorer open in a completely separate window and then Drag and drop the image fie into Affinity, does this make any difference or is it the same unresponsive result?

It's a little unusual that you're able to open some documents from open recent, but the freezing on file open is unusually an indication that there is a problem with your graphics card drivers, so I would initially recommend running through the following:

Update your GPU Drivers  

Make sure that you have the latest available drivers installed for your GPU, i've linked the AMD and Nvidia and Intel driver search tools below, dependant on your GPU. If possible, perform a clean installation of your drivers if given the option. 

https://www.nvidia.com/download/find.aspx  

https://www.amd.com/en/support  

https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/download-center/home.html  

Disable Hardware Acceleration 

Within the apps under Edit > Preferences > Performance try disabling Hardware Acceleration (The last tickbox) and then close the interface and restart the app when prompted to and try again. 

Change App Rendering Method 

Within the Apps under Edit > Preferences > Performance try changing the Renderer to ‘WARP’, close the interface and restart the app when prompted to. this forces the software to do the rendering which is significantly slower, but can help confirm what’s causing the issue as a temporary measure.