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Friendly_workmanship9503
Participant
Oct 30, 2026 1:46 PM UTC
Question

After Effects crashes on playback/startup: "RequestPrefetchedFrame frame not in async list!" and "SafeSave::Commit"

Hi everyone,

I'm experiencing persistent, critical crashes in After Effects that make the application completely unusable—even when starting a brand new, empty project with no layers.

Here are the exact crash logs I'm getting:

1. Prefetch / Async Crash:
"After Effects error: Crash in progress. Last logged message was: <prefetch> <5> RequestPrefetchedFrame frame not in async list!"

2. SafeSave / dvacore Crash:
"After Effects error: Crash in progress. Last logged message was: <dvacore> <exception> Caught exception! context: "dvacore::filesupport::SafeSave::Commit" description: "filesupport::Dir::PrefDir" file_extension: "txt" type: "dvacore::filesupport::file_delete_exception""
Followed immediately by: "( 0 :: 42 )"

I have literally tried every imaginable troubleshooting step, including:
- Completely uninstalling and reinstalling After Effects 3 separate times.
- Wiping all preferences, AppData folders, and leftover cache directories manually.
- Testing on a brand-new Windows local administrator account (the exact same crashes still occur).
- Purging all Disk Cache and RAM.
- Resetting workspaces and tweaking every possible preference setting.

Nothing has worked so far. It seems like a deep system-level conflict with the asynchronous rendering engine and dvacore file permissions. 

Does anyone know what causes this specific issue and how to permanently fix it?

System Specs:
- OS: Windows 10/11 (64-bit)
- After Effects Version: [ 2026 ]

    2 replies

    ToolfarmJP
    Community Expert
    ToolfarmJPCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    Nov 6, 2026 3:34 AM UTC

    Did you check the graphic card new driver was available?

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    Szalam
    Community Expert
    SzalamCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    Nov 1, 2026 3:44 PM UTC

    That sounds exceedingly frustrating.

    Has After Effects ever worked on this machine? If so, do you know what changed between it working and now?

    What versions of After Effects have you tried?

    If you can keep After Effects open long enough (with no composition or anything), try disabling Multi-Frame Rendering in Preferences > Memory & Performance,  See whether the prefetch crash continues.

    Check Windows Security's Controlled Folder Access, along with any third-party antivirus or endpoint protection software. These can sometimes interfere with applications writing or modifying files. Check the protection history for blocked operations rather than disabling security entirely.

    Check whether your Documents folder or Adobe preferences directories are being redirected or synchronized through OneDrive. Sometimes file-access problems can be caused by folder redirection, permissions, and synchronization conflicts.

    Do you have MSI Afterburner, RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), or other GPU monitoring or overlay utilities? If so, can you try disabling them? These can sometimes interfere with Adobe applications, and we might as well eliminate any potential weirdness. 

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