Designer Beta 2.5.0.2415 won't start

[Cooperphile]

Windows 10 version of Designer Beta 2.5.0.2415

The first few times I tried running Designer after the upgrade, about a second after the splash screen said, "Loading fonts..." the program would terminate.

I uninstalled it and downloaded the installer. Now it terminates before even showing the splash screen.

I don't see anything left hanging around in the task manager.

I do have an external HDD that failed and is no longer available in the list of devices. It was only used for backups, so I never referenced it from Designer. Just a shot-in-the-dark data point...

Thanks,
Mark Rogerson

[MikeTO]

Hi Mark, I suggest starting with Ctrl held down and clearing your user data. If the issue is with that missing hard drive, this should clear it up.

Good luck!

[Cooperphile]

10 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Hi Mark, I suggest starting with Ctrl held down and clearing your user data. If the issue is with that missing hard drive, this should clear it up.

Dang. I was hoping it would be that easy. Alas, same ol' same ol'. Thanks, MikeTO.

[Ron P.]

• Try Restarting your pc. Not shutdown/turn off, then back on. Restart.
• Then you might try running System File Checker
• Go to C:\Users\your user name\.affinity\Designer and Rename the 2.0 (Beta) folder. Then relaunch Affinity Designer Beta to see if that fixes it.

 

[Cooperphile]

1 hour ago, Ron P. said:

• Go to C:\Users\your user name\.affinity\Designer and Rename the 2.0 (Beta) folder. Then relaunch Affinity Designer Beta to see if that fixes it.

That did it! Thanks, Ron P.

[Ron P.]

Your Welcome

 

[Cooperphile]

Okay, this is very strange. It will work once. After I exit the program, it won't start again. Renaming the 2.0 (Beta) folder doesn't fix it without a reinstall. Then it will run one time only.

[EmT]

Hi @Cooperphile

Could you provide a copy of your crash reports please, you'll find them in %USERPROFILE%\.affinity\Designer\2.0 (Beta)\CrashReports\reports

[Cooperphile]

5 hours ago, EmT said:

Hi @Cooperphile

Could you provide a copy of your crash reports please, you'll find them in %USERPROFILE%\.affinity\Designer\2.0 (Beta)\CrashReports\reports

@EmT, that folder is empty.

[EmT]

@Cooperphile

Could you do the following:

1. Windows +R to open Run
2. Type in eventvwr
3. Under Windows Logs right click on Application
4. Select Save All Events As... and save the .evtx file 

Could you then upload that file to the following DropBox Link 

https://www.dropbox.com/request/ZBCikI9mHQfurg31TA2k

[Cooperphile]

4 hours ago, EmT said:

Could you do the following . . .

@EmT, I followed your instructions and created a 20MB file that would have taken all day to upload with my country-boy internet connection. So I cleared the log and started over with a new install of Designer Beta (DB). It didn't generate any events in the log. I reinstalled again, and got in the DB app and played around a little bit. In Preferences, under Beta, I told it to reset the app and it crashed, which did create an event. It also created a crash report, which I have uploaded to the dropbox area you provided (9e1ace97-b6b1-4eec-bbb8-e9746d4da377.dmp).

[EmT]

Is 2.4.2 release running without issues? 

Could you try re-installing the last beta build 2.5.0.2402 and see if that runs ok? Please let me know if you don't have the MSIX installer for that build. 

[Cooperphile]

@EmT, yes, 2.4.2 runs perfectly well.

I did not save the installer for the previous version, but it did run fine.

[EmT]

Thanks @Cooperphile

Do you have any Affinity/AF Fonts installed?

 

[Cooperphile]

1 hour ago, EmT said:

Do you have any Affinity/AF Fonts installed?

@EmT,

In 2.4.2, yes. None in the beta folder.

[Intuos5]

@EmT I have the same issue, just updated the Designer Beta and now it won't start, the process disappears on Windows 10 and I have crash logs.

66e72c5f-808f-4dee-a890-cc3d3e8acc87.dmp341d4451-050c-4a74-b479-142f73e1c5e7.dmp1812fd76-fd1b-440f-8068-2391281ad83e.dmp513beb4b-b99b-483b-8e81-7e82782d9efb.dmp

E: Control clicking the App and rebooting did not help.

E2: Looks like a .Net runtime issue related to fonts...?

[HappyDoom]

@EmT Howdy, same for me.
I tried it with the CTRL method and also reinstalled Designer Beta fresh. Didn't download any DLC stuff then, like fonts etc., still it just won't start.
The splash screen gets to the point where it says it's loading fonts, then it disappears. 🙈 Photo and Publisher work fine, tho.

(Windows 11, all latest drivers)

a4f7f20b-eccc-4e18-9272-81fd4a55a172.dmp

[Sean P]

15 hours ago, Intuos5 said:

@EmT I have the same issue, just updated the Designer Beta and now it won't start, the process disappears on Windows 10 and I have crash logs.

66e72c5f-808f-4dee-a890-cc3d3e8acc87.dmp 2.05 MB · 2 downloads 341d4451-050c-4a74-b479-142f73e1c5e7.dmp 2.08 MB · 2 downloads 1812fd76-fd1b-440f-8068-2391281ad83e.dmp 2.07 MB · 2 downloads 513beb4b-b99b-483b-8e81-7e82782d9efb.dmp 1.87 MB · 2 downloads

E: Control clicking the App and rebooting did not help.

E2: Looks like a .Net runtime issue related to fonts...?

 

15 hours ago, HappyDoom said:

@EmT Howdy, same for me.
I tried it with the CTRL method and also reinstalled Designer Beta fresh. Didn't download any DLC stuff then, like fonts etc., still it just won't start.
The splash screen gets to the point where it says it's loading fonts, then it disappears. 🙈 Photo and Publisher work fine, tho.

(Windows 11, all latest drivers)

a4f7f20b-eccc-4e18-9272-81fd4a55a172.dmp 1.71 MB · 4 downloads

Em is currently away on annual leave so you've got me in the mean time! 

Unfortunately I can't get any information from either of your crash dumps, however looking at the Event Viewer (and the fact Photo and Publisher are working fine) suggests your issue maybe potentially different to Cooperphile's and more like joe_l's here. 

Could you go into \%userprofile%\.affinity\Designer\2.0 (Beta)\AffinityFonts\ and check to see if you have any AFFont files in there. If there are could you remove these for the time being. Their is a Windows crash on runup that is being caused by these files

[Intuos5]

@Sean P  Removing the fonts does the trick for me, thanks!

[Sean P]

16 hours ago, Cooperphile said:

@EmT,

In 2.4.2, yes. None in the beta folder.

Hi Cooperphile, as mentioned above Em is currently away on annual leave, so I'm currently looking into this.

I've tried running the dump file you uploaded through Visual Studio but it doesn't seem to like it, so I can't really gather any more information from it.

You mentioned that it works the first time after reinstalling, but then any additional run ups it no longer works? On that first run up are you being asked to sign in and if so are you selecting 'Link my account' option?

Could you also zip up a copy of the contents at %UserProfile%\.affinity\Common\2.0 (Beta)\ and upload that to the Dropbox link please? You may find that it is quite large potentially due to the contents of the user folder. If that is the case you can remove them from the zip and upload that but do let us know the rough file sizes of that contents)

After that could you try doing a ctrl run up (after a reinstall so the app runs up) and ensure all 3 parent boxes are ticked (including the Deactivate Affinity licence' box). After sign in, when asked to link accounts please click 'Not Now' and see if that continues to work for you. Note this should completely wipe the contents from both the ..\Common\2.0 (Beta)\ folder mentioned above, as well as the ...\Designer\2.0 (Beta)\ that Ron P mentioned earlier in the thread, which is why keeping a backup prior to doing this is potentially helpful to us!

If that still does not work, I'm wondering if it doesn't like a font you have installed on your machine. So there is something else that I would like you to try, so we can try to narrow down the cause.

Thanks!

[HappyDoom]

@Sean P Hey thanks, worked for me too. 👍

[Cooperphile]

Howdy, @Sean P.

1. It has not asked me to sign in.

2. Zip of ...\Common\2.0 (Beta) uploaded. I removed the three highlighted files from the user folder to make the file smaller. Let me know if you need those. I can make more coffee.

3. I did the ctrl+start of the app and reset everything. Logged in, clicked "not now" and it still misbehaves the same way.

On another note, it did NOT clear the ...\Designer\2.0 (Beta) folder. It still has that crash report from April 29th in there.

[Cooperphile]

@Sean P, I just uploaded a zip of the ...\Common\2.0 (Beta) folder. 2.0 (Beta) - AFTER THE RESET.zip

[Sean P]

Thank you very much for those files (I shouldn't need the highlighted ones either thanks!) - unfortunately everything looks to be normal there and not out of the ordinary, so it certainly seems to me like it could be a font you have installed with Windows. Do you have many fonts installed to your copy of Windows or use a font manager at all?

I think the best way to try and find out what potentially could be stopping it is by using Process Monitor to monitor the app's process on launch and then send us the log file that creates.

To do this you would first need to download and run Procmon64.exe - this can be found on Microsoft's Process Monitor Page here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

After you download and run it will start to capture events (of which there are many) so you will want to set up a filter for the app you are using. In my case I created a Filter for the process name of 'publisher.exe', if you're using Designer this will be 'designer.exe' etc.

When that filter is set up, just run the application and wait for it to crash in the way you've been seeing.

Once it has done that you can disable the Capture using the Start/Stop Capture button to the right of the save icon. After that please save the log file using the 'Events displayed using current filter' option on the save dialog and the PML format.

When that has saved could you upload that to us - unfortunately it is relatively large (mine was about 71mb), but hopefully it will be able to give us a little more information to go off.

I've made a short video demonstrating those steps below.

[Cooperphile]

Hiya, @Sean P.

Log file uploaded.