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Inspiring
December 18, 2023
Question

Alt Key problem in Illustrator 28.1

  • December 18, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 572 views

As soon as I upgraded from 28 to 28.1 I began to notice this issue.  The moment I press Alt, the cursor stutters.  The first time it happened, if I held the cursor and just moved the mouse in circles, the cursor would jump from position to position rather than making smooth circular motions.  I rebooted the PC and hoped that would resolve it.  It was fine for an hour or two then it started back stuttering again, but not as bad as the first time.  Now, each time I press Alt, the cursor reacts with a quick pause then continues with whatever movement.  So if I sit here and move my cursor in circles then intermittently press alt, the cursor will stutter every time.  I'm getting really frustrated with Illustrator.  I used it for decades and it seemed like I never found any problems.  But in the last 5 years or so, I'm finding plenty bugs.  I don't even report all of them.  I only report the ones that are aggravating enough to report. I'm uninstalling 28.1 as soon as I finish writing this.  It's not good that we are paying for updates that we can't use.  Now I can't use the latest version of Bridge,  Illustrator, or Photoshop but I'm paying for all of them, and Adobe just raised the price!

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2 replies

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 19, 2023

Are you using a special mouse driver?

Special keyboard settings?

Are you using the LangSwitcher App?

KuttyjoeAuthor
Inspiring
December 19, 2023

No. No special mouse driver, keyboard settings, and no langswitcher app.  And the problem is instantly resolved by rolling back to Illustrator 28.  The problem started immediately with Illustrator 28.1.  Every single update now comes with new bugs that I can find within minutes of launching the program.

Bill Silbert
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 18, 2023

Did you try resetting your Illustrator preferences after the upgrade? Many times a fresh set of preferences, which restores the program to its defaults, will fix issues that occur after an upgrade.

To reset preferences on a PC:

You can try the quick way of resetting on a PC which is to hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift when launching Illustrator and respond affirmatively when asked if you want to reset. There have been some recent reports that the window asking if you want to reset is not popping up but that the prefs are being reset anyway. If this works great but if it doesn’t you may have to manually delete them.

To do so: On Windows 7 and above the preference files are hidden. To find them go to the Control Panel and open Folder Options and then click the View tab. Then select “Show hidden files and folders” or “Show hidden files, folders or drive options” in Advanced Settings. Then delete (or rename) the folder at the end of this path: C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator [version number]\ Settings\<Language>. Make sure that Illustrator is closed when you do this. When you relaunch the program it will create new preference files and the program will be at its default settings.

The advantage of manually deleting preference files is that after you’ve reset up the program (make sure that no document window is open) to your liking, you can create copies of your personalized “mint” preference files (make sure that you quit the program before copying them—that finalizes your customization) and use them in the future to replace any corrupt versions you may need to delete.

KuttyjoeAuthor
Inspiring
December 18, 2023

I wish resetting prefs and setting it all back up again was a quick few steps but it's not.  I've reset my prefs a lot of times lately for a lot of various bugs and resetting prefs hasn't resolved anything.  This time I'm just going back to an earlier version of Illustrator and hoping for the best. It's faster.