Affinity Photo 2.5.6 crashes almost immediately

[Peteri]

Hi there,

PC System information: 
        Operating System
            Windows 10 Pro 64-bit version 10.0.19045 Build 19045
        CPU
            Intel Core i7 6850K @ 3.60GHz    32 °C
            Broadwell-E/EP 14nm Technology
        RAM
            32.0GB Unknown @ 1303MHz (15-17-17-35)
        Motherboard
            ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. X99-A II (SOCKET 2011)    40 °C
        Graphics
            EA232WMi (1920x1080@60Hz)
            EA232WMi (1920x1080@60Hz)
            NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (ZOTAC International)
            4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (MSI)    31 °C
            SLI Disabled
 

I have just purchased the latest version of Affinity Photo v2.5.6, having previously tried the free trial version (v2.5.5, which worked without problems on my system). Now, whenever I run Affinity Photo, it either crashes immediately or after a slight delay before I have even done anything - if I am very lucky I can load an image file before it crashes. I have tried uninstalling, cleaning out temporary files, etc (using BleachBit) and reinstalling, yet the problem persists.

Attached is the latest log file.

In it's current state, the software is totally unusable!

Please advise.

Regards,

Peter

Log.txt

[Precambrian]

Neither Photo or Designer from V2.5 will open for me. They both crash after the 'loading fonts' splash screen, when a grey frozen window opens.

The only thing that works is going back to version 2.4.2 which works fine, downloaded from here. 

Photo - https://store.serif.com/update/windows/photo/2/ 
Designer - https://store.serif.com/update/windows/designer/2/ 

I'm looking at other vector program solutions instead.

 

[Peteri]

FYI

All of the following versions currently crash on my system: 2.4.2, 2.5.3, 2.5.5, 2.5.6

So even 2.4.2 is unstable! Not sure why the 2.5.5 trail version worked fine on my system.

I am almost at the stage of beginning to regret purchasing the software!

[Peteri]

UPDATE:

One of two things appears to have cured the immediate (or near immediate) crashing problem:

1. I updated the driver for my two nvidia graphics cards - not that the driver was that much out of date since I regularly update it whenever a new driver release is flagged by nvidia as available.

2. The above driver update prompted/necessitated a full restart of the system.

So one or both of these actions did something that cured the problem.

However, given that it has been 4 days since I first flagged the problem on this forum, the total absence of any response from the software development or support team is very disappointing. Just an acknowledgement that they had read the bug report and were looking into the problem, or some advice on things to try out, would have been good. For contrast, I use SideFX's Houdini software in my line of work, and if I flag a problem I can expect to get a response from their tech support team within a matter of hours, a day at the most.

Regards,

Peter

[Precambrian]

That's interesting but sadly, the updating of my Nvidia drivers had no effect. Still can't access the programs. 

I raised this crash-on-start issue a couple of months ago, so agree that technical support is lacking. For vector drawings I'm now using VectorStyler, which is excellent. 

[walt.farrell]

Are you getting Crash Reports, or is there anything interesting showing in Windows Event Manager?

 

 

[Precambrian]

No crash reports are generated. Neither event viewer or reliability monitor identify anything at the time of the crash. The programs just freeze immediately the main window is open (no startup / dashboard window opens). They have to be closed via Task Manager. This problem happens using either the MSIX or EXE installer. I've tried full uninstalls using Revo Uninstaller to clear out any registry entries and left-over files.  None makes a difference and the problems only occur from version 2.5