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Iain Simms
Participant
February 8, 2020
Question

After Effects can’t continue: unexpected failure during application startup

  • February 8, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 995 views

So I was hoping to have a trial of After Effects, and thus far I have to say I'm overwhelmingly unimpressed, as it won't even open!

 

Whenever I try to open After Affects all I get is the completely useless error message:

 

 

 

After Effects can’t continue: unexpected failure during application startup

 

 

 

I've searched the message but the only suggestion that came up was ensuring I have read/write permission on my ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe folder and all items inside, which I've done, also for the ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe and ~/Documents/Adobe folders. I even tried chmod -R 777 for all of them (have undone this since) and it didn't work either, so it's not an issue with any of these, nor should it have been.

 

I've also tried adding Adobe After Effects 2020 (and Adobe After Effects Render Engine) to have full disk access in System Preferences -> Security Privacy, this didn't make a difference either.

 

I'm trying to run After Effects on a 2018 Mac Mini running macOS Catalina 10.15.3, I have only just installed Creative Cloud and After Effects for the first time on this machine.

 

There are no After Effects related logs, crash reports or anything else that I can find to give some clue as to what's wrong, it just won't open.

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

nishu_kush
Community Manager
nishu_kushCommunity Manager
Community Manager
February 19, 2020

Hi there,

 

Sorry for the crash issue with After Effects. Could you share your system specifications (CPU, GPU, RAM, OS)? If you are using any antivirus, disable it and launch After Effects.

 

Let us know if it helps.

 

Thanks,

Nishu

I
Iain SimmsAuthor
Participant
February 19, 2020

I'm running on a 2018 Mac Mini with the i7-8700B (6 core/12 threads with Intel UHD Graphics 630), 16gb of RAM running macOS Catalina 10.15.3, I'm not running any active anti-virus (I scan files on-demand when downloaded instead).

 

I don't think any of these is a factor though; as I say, I can open After Affects on other user accounts, it only seems to be the user account that originally installed it that is affected.

nishu_kush
Community Manager
nishu_kushCommunity Manager
Community Manager
March 5, 2020

Sorry for the delay. Could you check if you have Deep Freeze installed on your computer? If yes, please remove it temporarily and check if it brings any change.

Let us know.

 

Thanks,

Nishu

I
Iain SimmsAuthor
Participant
February 8, 2020

So slight update, I've been able to open After Affects on a different user account (i.e- another user account on the same machine), this at least allows me to give it a try, but I'm still completely unable to open it for my main user account (the one I'd actually like to use).

 

So it must be something related to settings and such, but as far as I can tell everything is as it should be on the user account for which I'm having the problem; all Adobe folders I can find (I did a search using find from the command line) are fully read/write accessible by myself. I've also tried clearing them all but it doesn't make a difference.

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