Cannot communicate with other Affinity apps [Issue + Workaround found]

[Snoopy20111]

Hi folks!

I wanted to report a bug I encountered yesterday and found my fix for. Upon launching any of the three programs, they would get stuck with just the splash screen saying "Initializing..." until the following message appeared:

Quote

Cannot communicate with other Affinity apps. Please ensure the app is up-to-date and that your firewall isn't blocking local network traffic.

Naturally, this was confusing, as all Affinity programs were working just fine the day before when I'd updated them, and I've never touched my firewall settings!

My setup and required details:

• Computer Specs
  • OS:   Windows 11 Home, version 22H2, OS Build 22621.3007
  • Processor:   Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-9300H CPU @ 2.40GHz
  • RAM:   16.0 GB
  • System type:   64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
• Using all three programs, Photo, Designer, and Publisher
• Using the latest release versions (2.3.1)
• Yes, I reproduced it, and found the issue + workaround (see below)

What I tried (without success):

• Restarting my PC
• Uninstalling and re-installing all Affinity Products
  • Once with the MSIX installer and "app"
  • Once with the EXE installer and "programs"
• Adjusting and opening up my Firewall settings

Today (as I post this) I have found the issue: Hidden Folders!

Many programs on my PC have created folders on my PC at C:\Users\[my username] that start with a dot; as I understand it, these are common with cross-platform programs and normally get hidden by Mac OSX and Linux machines, but not necessarily by Windows, and they were starting to clutter my User directory, so I marked them and the contents inside as hidden. Shortly after, my problem above began. As soon as I un-hid the folder C:\Users\[my username]\.affinity, lo and behold, the programs started right up, and when I hid the folder again, the issue returned. My other PC running a different AMD setup with Windows 11 had the exact same issue when I hid and unhid the .affinity folder.

Possible cause in the program:

According to a Stack Overflow page I found while looking up how to hide the folders in the first place (as well as another page with further details linked from there), it appears that if a Windows program calls CreateFile with the CREATE_ALWAYS flag but no definition for FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN, operations will fail on hidden files. While I can't speak to what the Affinity programs are doing while initializing, I imagine the issue could be this, or something similar.

 

I hope this is helpful for others who have a similar problem, and for Affinity developers to hopefully fix the issue when it's possible to do so.

[Bit Disappointed]

The issue where Affinity programs can't start properly due to problems with hidden folders primarily falls on the software developer (Affinity) rather than Microsoft. It's the responsibility of Affinity's developers to ensure their software correctly handles file and folder attributes, including hidden ones, across supported operating systems. The problem, involving incorrect handling of hidden files during initialization, suggests a need for Affinity to update their software to manage file system interactions properly, addressing this specific issue for a more robust application performance.

[Frank Zimmerman]

Snoopy20111, thanks for posting this. That was exactly my problem. I hid those dotted folders, just like they would be hidden in Linux, and a week or so later when I went to launch Affinity, all 3 programs failed with the same error! 

[debraspicher]

Very good find.

[Komatös]

The .Affinity Folder is used by the MSIX versions of the Affinity Programms. MSI versions uses the (hidden) appdata\roaming\affinity to store the settings, the assets, brushes and all other.

The programs should start when you run them as administrator and also when they are hidden. Since the programs on my PC and laptop open without errors both with and without the hidden status, I think it has more to do with access rights to the directories.

 

[Snoopy20111]

1 hour ago, Komatös said:

The .Affinity Folder is used by the MSIX versions of the Affinity Programms. MSI versions uses the (hidden) appdata\roaming\affinity to store the settings, the assets, brushes and all other.

The programs should start when you run them as administrator and also when they are hidden. Since the programs on my PC and laptop open without errors both with and without the hidden status, I think it has more to do with access rights to the directories.

 

I currently have the MSI versions installed and they began/ceased to work when I unhid/hid the .Affinity folder in my User directory. Running the programs as Administrator with the .Affinity folder hidden did not affect the issue. I uninstalled the MSI versions and re-installed the MSIX versions and had the same behavior there.

Notably, I also have my AppData folder unhidden if that changes anything, since I had to access it more than a few times for other applications. Interestingly, if I re-hide the AppData/Affinity folder specifically, I get the same error at Initialization. So that's two folders that just happen to break everything when hidden!

Regardless, it's a bit odd that any such version would simply fail from a hidden/unhidden folder like that. Checking the .Affinity folder's permissions, my username has all the same as Administrator and System. If it is a permissions thing, which it definitely could be if you're not replicating the issue, then it's one I'm not sure how to address for the layman like myself.

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, Snoopy20111 said:

I currently have the MSI versions installed and they began/ceased to work when I unhid/hid the .Affinity folder in my User directory.

That's very strange as only the MSIX version uses that folder. Nothing you do to it should have any effect on the EXE/MSI version. 

[Komatös]

If you have installed the MSI/EXE version, rename .Affinity to e.g. .affinity_org and see what happens.
 
To see the access rights, click with the left mouse button on the Affinity folder under appdata... and select Properties -> Security. In addition to the System and Administrators groups, your user name should also appear here and, in the best case, the user should have full access.

And, don't mix MSI/EXE and MSIX versions together! This prevents the comunication between the other programms of the suite.

[Frank Zimmerman]

When I had a problem with the MSIX versions, I uninstalled them, and installed the EXE versions. I got the same error. Note that I did not do an exhaustive cleanup after uninstalling; I just relied on the uninstaller to cleanup. There may have been registry entries, and folders like the ".affinity" folder, leftover. This could be why the EXE versions are also using this ".affinity" folder...perhaps there are references to it in the registry.

I can confirm that the EXE versions give the same error, if the ".affinity" folder is hidden, but there is a caveat: there are two options given when you hide a folder:

1) Apply changes to this folder only, or
2) Apply changes to this folder, subfolders, and files. 

If I pick option 2, then none of the Affinity programs (EXE versions) will start properly, they all give an error.

If I pick option 1, then they all start properly.

If I leave the ".affinity" folder unhidden, and rename it to "affinty-xyz" or whatever, the programs launch fine.

If I only hide the ".affinity" folder, and not the subfolders and files, then the programs launch fine.

There are obviously some files in the ".affinity" that are being accessed. I opened up the "Designer/2.0" folder inside the ".affinity" folder, and it shows four files that are dated for just a few minutes ago, when I launched the program:

1) ipc.log
2) notificationoptions.dat
3) preferences.dat
4) cs.log

I did not check every folder/file in the ".affinity" folder, as there are lots of them. Perhaps running an app that monitors disk activity would yield a more full list.

If I rename ".affinity" to ".affinity-xyz" then launch Designer, and create a new document, the following file, in the "Designer/2.0" folder, inside the ".affinity-xyz" folder shows the current date:

1) newdocumentpanelstate.dat

It could well be that any renames on the folder are being tracked and recorded in the registry. If I rename ".affinity" to ".dont-read" the files inside still get updated when I launch one of the programs.

[Frank Zimmerman]

I did a few other things. After renaming ".affinity" to ".dont-read", I searched the registry, but could not locate any reference to this folder. So perhaps there is some other way it is being tracked.

I should also mention that the "temp" folder inside ".affinity/Designer/2.0" also showed the current date, after using the Designer app.

I also checked the /AppData/Roaming/Affinity/Designer/2.0" folder, and it showed updated dates on the same files as mentioned in the previous post. It also showed updated dates on the "temp" and "autosave" folders.

So in some way, the EXE version is using both locations, and changing files in both locations. I suppose the programmers at Serif know why this is so. Is it possible to have both versions (MSIX and EXE) installed at the same time?

[Snoopy20111]

5 hours ago, Frank Zimmerman said:

When I had a problem with the MSIX versions, I uninstalled them, and installed the EXE versions. I got the same error. Note that I did not do an exhaustive cleanup after uninstalling; I just relied on the uninstaller to cleanup. There may have been registry entries, and folders like the ".affinity" folder, leftover. This could be why the EXE versions are also using this ".affinity" folder...perhaps there are references to it in the registry.
[...]

This roughly reflects my own experience, though I got somewhat different results (see below, I didn't go quite as in-depth as you did). I can confirm that everything still works if you only hide the folder and not all sub-folders and files, which I must sheepishly admit I was doing and didn't report.
 

 

8 hours ago, Komatös said:

If you have installed the MSI/EXE version, rename .Affinity to e.g. .affinity_org and see what happens.
 
To see the access rights, click with the left mouse button on the Affinity folder under appdata... and select Properties -> Security. In addition to the System and Administrators groups, your user name should also appear here and, in the best case, the user should have full access.

And, don't mix MSI/EXE and MSIX versions together! This prevents the comunication between the other programs of the suite.

Renamed it as you suggested. After doing more tests for my previous response, I ended up with the MSIX version installed (shows up in "Apps" rather than "Programs") and renamed the .affinity folder to .affinity_xyz. Interestingly, when launching each of the three apps, the programs started up just fine and created a new .Affinity folder. What's more, they seem to have forgotten my Affinity login, prompting me to log-in for a "one-time license check," so presumably that information is stored in and retrieved from the .Affinity folder.

I've also attached a screenshot of my permissions for the .affinity folder, with identifying bits like my name, Username, and Computer name struck out. To my amateur eyes, all seems to be all in order; both System and Administrators have the same rights I do (which is all of them, minus Special Permissions, whatever that is).