After Clean Installation, Affinity Photo Crashes When Trying to Open a Document

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On a clean installation of Windows 11 and Affinity Photo, Affinity Photo crashes when trying to open a new document (or any image file).  The Affinity UI is initially OK, however as soon as the user tries to do anything that invokes the canvas, it closes by itself (crashes).

It's pretty unusual for an application to fail on a completely clean install, therefore I tried installing Affinity Photo in Windows Sandbox – as the sandbox is pretty much out-of-the-box – and it also crashes there too, indicating it's not a config issue.

While the current issue is with "affinity-photo-msi-2.4.2.exe", I also tried "affinity-photo-msi-2.4.1.exe" that has previously worked fine on the same machine/same operating system and the issue also occurs with that installer as well now.

Therefore, it's possible that Microsoft have made changes in the last month or so, that is causing an issue (either Patch Tuesday changes, or perhaps changes they may have made to facilitate "Microsoft Store installers for web").  I don't know – it's just a theory why the issue would suddenly start occurring.

The Windows Store version of Affinity Photo does not crash, it's only the *.exe version.

affinity-photo-msi-2.4.2.exe - Not OK
affinity-photo-msi-2.4.1.exe - Not OK
affinity-photo-msi-2.3.0.exe - Not OK
Affinity Photo Store version - OK

Other third-party app exe installations on the machine appear to be working fine so far, just not Affinity.

Video showing crash on clean Affinity Photo installation in Windows Sandbox:

Crash report ID (should be automatically uploaded):

978adc79-8dad-4735-81bf-794107352a55
1c943729-4412-444d-83ba-889db83334ae

Debugging DMP files is not something I know much about, however Microsoft WinDbg appears to refer to the below.

Unknown exception - code c06d007e (first/second chance not available)


SYMBOL_NAME:  serif_interop_persona+1488944

MODULE_NAME: Serif_Interop_Persona

IMAGE_NAME:  Serif.Interop.Persona.dll

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID:  APPLICATION_FAULT_c06d007e_Serif.Interop.Persona.dll!Unknown

 

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Windows 11 - 23H2 (22631.3527) 

The Windows build number is likely higher than the current stable channel patch level, due to installing the below preview updates to see if they made an improvement.  They did not.

2024-04 Cumulative Update Preview for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8.1 for Windows 11, version 23H2 for x64 (KB5037591)

2024-04 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11 Version 23H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5036980)

 

[walt.farrell]

Do you have Hardware Acceleration enabled or disabled in Settings/Performance?

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Hardware acceleration is automatically off, as this machine has never had an eligible GPU for hardware acceleration (just an Intel Integrated GPU).

It's a particularly odd issue, as the last time I wiped this machine was only about 3-4 weeks ago when I was testing something else.  And it really is a clean install each time ("Win11_23H2_EnglishInternational_x64v2.iso" booting from USB stick and wiping all disk partitions).  At that time, "affinity-photo-msi-2.4.1.exe" worked OK and also updated using "affinity-photo-msi-2.4.2.exe" OK.  So, same hardware, same Operating System, same applications – just 3-4 weeks apart.  Also the MSIX version still works OK.

That's why I'm thinking along the lines that it's possibly not a problem with the Affinity installer/application per se, but something else has changed in the last month that the Affinity application doesn't like now (at least when installed using the EXE installer).

 

[walt.farrell]

Well, Windows updates are known to cause problems on occasion, so that could be it I suppose.

If you're getting crash reports Serif may want to see them. They can provide an upload link or you could post them here if you're comfortable doing that.

[DWright]

Can you please try holding down the CTRL key and the star Affinity Photo and when the Clear User Data screen appear click the Clear Button to force the AppData system files to be recreated.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, DWright said:

Can you please try holding down the CTRL key and the star Affinity Photo

“Spell check won’t save you!”

*then start

As I’m sure you know, you need to hold down the Ctrl key while starting the app, since it won’t work if you release the key too soon. But I’m sure the OP knows this, too.

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13 hours ago, DWright said:

Can you please try holding down the CTRL key and the star Affinity Photo and when the Clear User Data screen appear click the Clear Button to force the AppData system files to be recreated.

That was the first thing I tried when it first happened and it made no difference.

Looking at the issue further, there's something weird going on with the Affinity EXE installers.  As a test, I clean installed Windows 10 22H2 (19045.2965) from Windows Installation Media and Affinity Photo crashes on Windows 10 now as well.

The last version of Affinity Photo that doesn't crash after a clean install is "affinity-photo-msi-2.0.4.exe" – this version works OK on both Windows 10 and Windows 11.  All versions from "affinity-photo-msi-2.1.0.exe" upwards crash on both Windows 10 and Windows 11.  As previously mentioned, I installed "affinity-photo-msi-2.4.2.exe" within the last 3-4 weeks and it worked OK then, therefore this is a really recent phenomenon.

IIRC, "affinity-photo-msi-2.0.4.exe" used the below location to store files:

C:\Users\Username\.affinity

Then, from "affinity-photo-msi-2.1.0.exe" upwards, during installation it moved the files from that location to the below location:

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Affinity

Therefore I'm wondering whether the issue is perhaps related to this in some way, seeing as 2.0.4 works fine and 2.1.0 does not.

I no longer believe it's Windows Update related, as Windows Update never had a chance to run – meaning the Affinity installer was run on a pretty much out-of-the-box Windows 10 22H2 (19045.2965).  I also don't think it could be due to faulty Microsoft Defender definitions or antimalware engine or cloud heuristics logic, as Defender doesn't run in Windows Sandbox and the issue occurred in the sandbox as well.

Unfortunately, I have no explanation why this issue is only just occurring now – I have never seen anything like this before.  It's almost as if something changed on a particular cut-off date sometime in the last month.

As licencing information is stored in the above mentioned locations, has anything changed with online activation in the last month?