Affinity Designer & Photo will not launch on Win11

[KatD]

Version 2.3.0.2165 of Designer and Photo will not launch, yet Publisher open fine. It's a simple default install on Windows 11 Pro: no network drives or anything like that.
Here are the things I tried:

• reinstall
• holding CTRL while launching
• turned off malware and virus apps
• deleted .xml files from C:\Users\[user_name]\.affinity\Designer\2.0\Settings\ (in hopes it would repopulate)

I don't know what else to try. Any ideas?

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Sorry to hear you're having problems, but "will not launch" is a bit vague. What happens when you try? Do you get the splash screen at all? If you do, what messages does it show before it disappears.

Do you get any crash reports (see FAQ to find them)? Does Windows Event Viewer show any faults?

Are you using the default MSIX-based applications, or did you download the EXE installers?

Are these new installs, or were the apps working before? If they used to work, what version were you using then?

[KatD]

Nothing happens (no splash or error screens) other than the Windows "hourglass" for about 1-3 seconds. There are no crash reports. Used MSIX to install. I believe this started upon latest update (2.3).

[walt.farrell]

Windows Event Manager may show something. 

Or perhaps log.txt will have something interesting. Try %USERPROFILE%\.affinity\designer\2.0\

or %USERPROFILE%\.affinity\photo\2.0\

[KatD]

Found attached...

d12a73aa-c50b-44e8-87ae-3daa40774009.dmp

[DWright]

Hi @KatD,

Your crash report is only showing a Windows kernel error, can you please try right clicking the Designer or Photo icon and then from the menu select More>App Settings and then in the new windows click the Repair option in the reset category to check for any issues with the installed app

[KatD]

That worked! Thank you so much for all your help!

[pwhole]

I'm having this exact same problem installing my Photo 1.10.6 on a brand-new machine running Windows 11 - I was running Windows 10 on the previous machine and never had an issue. I was asked for my license key on launch, entered that and then the splash screen appears, I see 'Loading Fonts', and then the app crashes. I've tried right-clicking on all icons to try and get the 'App Settings' panel to do the 'Repair' shown above, but it doesn't seem to be available - I'm baffled.

If it helps I'm running an Intel Arc A770 graphics card with the latest drivers, but I don't seem to be having any issues with it anywhere else at present. I can supply more hardware info if need be but it's a brand-new PD Specialist custom build machine.

Anyone have any ideas?

[v_kyr]

5 hours ago, pwhole said:

Anyone have any ideas?

• First try with disabled OpenCL hardware acceleration ...

• If that doesn't help check your MS .Net runtime installment via the MS .Net Framework Repair Tool.
• If that also doesn't help try resetting the app settings ...

• If that doesn't change anything and you've installed via APh MSIX installers, uninstall and try the MSI EXE installers instead.

Other than that look after possible crash reports and through the Affinity FAQs listed here in the forum ...

• Frequently Asked Questions about V1 Software

[pwhole]

Many thanks for the reply - I'll try this tomorrow and report back.

[Dan C]

17 hours ago, pwhole said:

Photo 1.10.6 

(...)

the splash screen appears, I see 'Loading Fonts', and then the app crashes.

(...)

I'm running an Intel Arc A770 graphics card

I can confirm this is a known issue in V1 with Hardware Acceleration enabled for Intel Arc GPUs, so disabling this using one of the above methods should resolve this for you

 

[pwhole]

Aha! Thank you! At least this confirms the issue now, so I'll have a go at sorting this out. I do appreciate the Intel Arcs haven't been around that long, and so there's bound to be teething troubles I guess - I'll report back.

[pwhole]

Sorry for the delay on this - work intervened. OK, I just ran the 'no ocl' command prompt option and Photo loaded fine this time - brilliant. Just to be clear, if I now re-enable OpenCl in Preferences, and then Restart, will this cause it to crash again, or is just the first launch? I have re-registered now. I guess I can just try, but don't want to spoil anything now

[Dan C]

I'm glad to hear you've been able to open the app successfully, thanks for letting us know!

12 hours ago, pwhole said:

Just to be clear, if I now re-enable OpenCl in Preferences, and then Restart, will this cause it to crash again, or is just the first launch?

Unfortunately re-enabling this option will cause the app to crash when restarting - you will need to use Affinity V1 with this option disabled at all times to avoid this issue, our apologies.

[pwhole]

Sorry for the delay in responding - I had to go away for a few days. But that's fine, thanks for letting me know - my new machine is pretty fast anyway, so I doubt it will be a serious issue.

[JaneRu]

Hello, I'm having the same issue as pwhole above with a new laptop and Affinity Photo not launching. Could you please write out the step-by-step instructions of the above solution for a non-techie please? Like in layman's terms if possible. I'd appreciate it so much!

Never mind, I got it working thanks to the Affinity OpenCL disabler that was provided by one of the members! Thanks so much!

Edited January 23 by JaneRu
Got it working