Participating Frequently

Question

Dreamweaver 21.7 randomly crashes. How do I diagnose?

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
February 6, 2026
7 replies
352 views

I’m using Dreamweaver 21.7 to edit a few files outside of my Wordpress site, like the styles.css and php files. I have fresh install. DS randomly crashes and closes while I’m editing. I can go 5-10 minutes, sometimes make a few saves and uploading the changed file (sometimes not) before DW just quits on me and closes down in the middle of a text edit.

This is on Windows 11 pro, all up-to-date. How can I figure out what is happening?

RanjithaHR

Participant

Hi @jeffb8188

Thank you for reaching out and sharing the details.

We have released Dreamweaver 21.8 with fixes and improvements. Could you please update to DW 21.8 and try reproducing the scenario you are currently working on?

Once updated, please monitor whether Dreamweaver still crashes while editing the CSS/PHP files. If the issue continues, kindly let us know along with any crash logs or additional observations so we can investigate further.

Thanks,
Ranjitha

mbwalker2929

Participant

I just want to make sure there have been reports of issues with v21.8. Simple opening of files and documents takes 10-30 seconds before they will function. Many reboots and reconnections have been attempted to resolve this issue. 21.8 is not working atm

RanjithaHR

Participant

Hi @mbwalker2929

Thanks for the update. To help us investigate this further, could you please let us know which machine/system is facing this issue? Also, please share the OS version and system specifications if possible.

Since you mentioned delays while opening files in v21.8, this information will help us narrow down the cause.

Regards,
Ranjitha

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

Try Restoring Preferences to see if that helps.

https://helpx.adobe.com/dreamweaver/kb/restore-preferences-dreamweaver.html

Failing that, I would revert to a previous version from Creative Cloud Desktop App. Maybe an earlier version will be more stable on your system.

Hope that helps.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

whcressall

Known Participant

Dreamweaver crashes while idle. every single day. Win 10, AMD Ryzen 9.

kangaroo bar

Participant

Has anyone heard an update on this? Anyone from Adobe monitoring these community “support” sites? Still crashing. Sad.

C

chadreitsma

Participating Frequently

Mine is randomly crashing as well. I’m reverting to a previous version.

R

Rooster2124

Participant

I’ve had the same issues also. Sometimes I also loose the capability to use my keyboard when it comes to copy and paste. I am using a MacBook Pro. Newest on the market. Hopefully Adobe will upgrade Dreamweaver soon. Well pass due.

kangaroo bar

Participant

I’m having the same issue. Restoring to a previous version fixed the problem. Tried resetting the preference file in 21.7 -- no difference. It’s clearly an Adobe bug. Previous versions were more stable. Perhaps 21.7 should be named nightmareweaver?

It’s 2026. Code should be more stable than this.

jeffb8188Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks, at least it’s nice to know I’m not crazy and someone else is having these issues. (And I used to work in software QC. I--and my company--would have been mortified if a bug like that got out the door). I’ll see if a rollback helps.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

Are you coding in LIVE or DESIGN mode? Use Ctrl + Shift + F11 to toggle between them. For coding PHP or CSS files, I prefer to keep it in DESIGN mode. It’s faster & uses less GPU resources.

Frequently save to your local hard drive (Ctrl/Cmd + S) to minimize data loss.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

jeffb8188Author

Participating Frequently

I’m coding in DESIGN mode, in the Code window. No need for anything else. The system has a Ryzen 7 5700X and 32GB of RAM; resources shouldn’t be an issue… especially since previous versions of Dreamweaver ran find on the same system for literally years before I had to do a Windows reinstall. It’s unusable if it won’t stay up and I’m constantly losing my edits, even if I save often and it’s just the last few minutes worth.

So back to my question--is there a way to diagnose the failure?

B

Ben M

Community Expert

I’m coding in DESIGN mode, in the Code window. No need for anything else. The system has a Ryzen 7 5700X and 32GB of RAM; resources shouldn’t be an issue… especially since previous versions of Dreamweaver ran find on the same system for literally years before I had to do a Windows reinstall. It’s unusable if it won’t stay up and I’m constantly losing my edits, even if I save often and it’s just the last few minutes worth.

So back to my question--is there a way to diagnose the failure?

Are you getting a crash report when it crashes from Adobe? That log could give insights into what is causing the issue.

Also you mention that you had to do a Windows reinstall. Did you try to restore your profiles from before that crash as part of that reinstall? Sometimes there have been unexplainable issues with Adobe software when restoring or moving OS data such as using tools to move files from an old computer to a new one where they typically recommend fresh installs vs. trying to restore or save old data such as application or user profile data. If you wanted to test, you could setup a new user profile on the computer and see if DW produces the same crash in that new profile.

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