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Affinity Photo 2 crashes on start after Windows 11 update


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I didn’t have any problems until I installed the latest Windows update. Now Affinity Photo 2 crashes every time on startup. 
I tried repairing, resetting, and finally uninstalling and reinstalling. Nothing works. 
Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,

Brian

 

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Welcome to the forums @Brian Alexander,

Can you confirm at what point you're encountering the crash, does the app start screen appear at any point, and if it does is it immediately closing or freezing or does nothing happen at all?

If you go to Windows Settings > Windows Updates > Update History could you upload a screenshot of the updates list that shows your most recently installed updates? I've also just updated Windows 11 to the latest possible version but I'm not running into any app crashes on startup in the MSIX or .EXE version of the apps.

Also, from the Update settings could you check if you're part of the insider program?

Finally, if you could provide any recent crash reports generated from the app since you've had this issue that would be great, the FAQ below details how to find these.

Many thanks

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Thanks, Nathan.

-When I open the app, it loads and I get the start screen, but as soon as I click any menu item I get the hourglass and then the app just disappears.

-I'm not part of the Windows Insider program

-There are no crash reports, but I may have lost them when I uninstalled and reinstalled. There are still no crash reports, though.

I downloaded the Affinity Beta version and it works great!

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Windows Updates.jpg

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For what it's worth, my Windows 11 system has all those updates and the Affinity 2.4.0.2301 applications are working fine.

My system, however, is running Windows 23H2, and I see you're only on 22H2.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
    Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2,  16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

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Much the same as Walt i'm up to date with KB5034848 as the latest update installed, but also on 23H2. The update may have been a coincidence, especially if the beta app is working which if it's up to date will be the same version as the release.

I'd recommend following the below to disable OpenCL from outside of the app:

  1. Close all affinity apps
  2. Hold down CTRL and launch Photo 2 while still holding CTRL
  3. A 'Clear user data' menu should prompt, tick 'Disable Hardware Acceleration' and then press 'Clear
  4. The app will now launch, try opening a new document.

If the above still results in a crash, while I'm not convinced it's the cause you could also try removing the installed KB5034848 update since this started happening just to rule it out. To do this Go to Control Panel > Uninstall a program > Select 'View Installed updates' on the left hand side > Find the update ref and press 'uninstall' and then once removed and rebooted try opening the app again.

Finally, we do offer an alternative .EXE installer for the apps, so you could try uninstalling the existing MSIX version of the app via windows settings > installed apps and then proceed with installing the .EXE version from the link below.

https://store.serif.com/en-gb/update/windows/photo/2/

 

 

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Thanks Nathan,

I tried launching with the CTRL button and I did get the Clear user data menu, but I could not get past that. I was unable to Disable the hardware acceleration.

So I did the following:

     -Uninstalled Version 2, and reinstalled.             No luck

     -Downloaded the exe install file.                        No luck

     -Uninstalled the Windows update                      No luck.

Now it freezes up on the sign in to validate window then crashes. There's a weird little "Tools" image that pops up (see attached photo) before it crashes.

start window.jpg

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28 minutes ago, Brian Alexander said:

I was unable to Disable the hardware acceleration.

Do you mean that you couldn’t see it in the ‘Clear User Data’ dialog, or that you could see it but your attempts to tick ‘Disable Hardware Acceleration’ left the checkbox in the same state as you had found it?

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Hi @Brian Alexander,

Thanks for following up and providing the screenshot, the 'Tools' appearing at the top left hand corner with empty swatches is really strange. As Alfred mentioned above could you clarify what happens when you try and Disable Hardware acceleration in the clear user data dialog, is that window also freezing up and crashing?

I'd also suggest following the below to factory reset the app's local settings manually for both MSIX and .EXE versions:

  1. Close All Affinity apps
  2. Press WIN + R to bring up run and enter the following:
    %APPDATA%
  3. In here there should be an 'Affinity' folder, rename it to 'AffinityOld'
  4. Press WIN + R to bring up run and enter the following:
    %USERPROFILE%
  5. In here there should be an '.affinity' folder, rename it to '.affinityOld'
  6. Launch Photo again

If the above fails since we don't have any crash reports to work off, could you provide a copy of the Event viewer System and Application logs after encountering the app freezing and crashing? The FAQ below details how to find them.

Once you have saved both to .EVTX files, if you could upload them here that would be great: https://www.dropbox.com/request/J57X2Hvsn0n5XPdWZE2f

 

Thanks

 

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On 3/7/2024 at 12:52 PM, Alfred said:

Do you mean that you couldn’t see it in the ‘Clear User Data’ dialog, or that you could see it but your attempts to tick ‘Disable Hardware Acceleration’ left the checkbox in the same state as you had found it?

Alfred, thanks for responding, I could see it but it would crash when I tried to check the box.

Luckily, the situation is resolved, thanks to Nathan's suggestions below.

Thank you for your help.

Brian

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  • 2 months later...

Just updated to 2.5.0 and now I can't get Photo to open. It gets to the 'Loading fonts...' message on the loading screen and then crashes. I tried clearing user data and hardware acceleration as suggested above, but no luck. I've also tried turning off any installed fonts. Anyone else getting this issue or have any other solutions? I can only imagine that this will happen to Designer and Publisher as well if I update.

Running Windows 11 23H2 OS build 22631.3593

 

Thanks!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was tempted by an interesting discount and before buying I installed the trial versions of all Affinity products on Windows 11 (with the latest updates), all worked correctly except Affinity Photo - there was a completely identical problem as discussed here on the forum, the program opened, but whenever I wanted to open one of the tutorial sets/slides, the whole program crashed immediately. Likewise, when I opened any image, it crashed immediately when I used the tool. The advice about disabling hardware support helped, but this is not a solution. If I understand correctly, everything is now felt in software and the speed of shutdown is rapidly lower than with hardware support. Are you looking for a solution to this bug or do you consider it a standard support solution for the future? 🙂

Thank you for your answer
Martin Reznicek

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