Frequent crashing started recently

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
August 18, 2026
4 replies
57 views

Yesterday, after working in Illustrator for a few hours, the program began to crash frequently. I was prompted to send the error report to Adobe then the program closed itself. This would happen every 10-15 minutes, but as the day went on, it became more frequent. Now, I can maybe work for about 10 minutes before it crashes, but many times it will crash right after opening the program and before a file is loaded. The error report says it’s an unknown exception and does not really help.

I am on version 29.7.1 and cannot upgrade because I’m in a professional environment where every computer needs to stay on the same version of the program. I haven’t made any changes to my PC or installed any new software. Graphics drivers are up to date and have been uninstalled/reinstalled. I have reinstalled Illustrator and Acrobat with no success. Does anyone know what may be happening?

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @Sam365338998hlg

I’m sorry to hear about your experience. I hope Bill and Creative Explorer’s suggestions helped resolve the problem. If not, please try installing Illustrator 29.8.10 (LTS) and let us know how it goes.

Also, try the suggestions in this help article (https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/kb/fix-crash-on-launch-issues.html) and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

Try resetting your Illustrator preferences. This process will restore the program to its defaults. Hopefully, the crashes will then cease.

To reset preferences:

For Macintosh Users: The User Library folder in which Illustrator’s preferences are stored is hidden by default on most Macintoshes. To access it make sure that Illustrator is closed and click on the desktop to launch a Finder Window (Command-N).With this window in column view follow the path User>Home folder (it’s the folder with an icon that looks like a house—it may have the user’s name rather than “Home”) and click on the Home folder. With the Option Key pressed choose Library from the Finder Go Menu. “Library” will now appear within the Home folder. Within the Library folder find the folder called Preferences and within it find the folder called “Adobe Illustrator <Version #> Settings” (earlier versions of Illustrator might just say “Adobe Illustrator”) and the file called “com.adobe.Illustrator.plist” and delete both that folder and that file. When Illustrator is next launched it will create new preference files and the program will be restored to its defaults.

For Windows Users: 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:

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.

S

Sam365338998hlgAuthor

Participant

Hi Bill,

I appreciate the response, however in my post I mentioned completely reinstalling Illustrator which reset the preferences.

In the crash report, the exception stack is as follows:

<backtrace crashedThread="0">
<thread index="0">
<stackStatement index="0" address="0x00007FFBC20D187A" symbolname="RaiseException"/>
<stackStatement index="1" address="0x00007FFBB91F55A9" symbolname="CxxThrowException"/>
<stackStatement index="2" address="0x00007FFBB9194E6F" symbolname="std::_Xbad_function_call"/>
<stackStatement index="3" address="0x00007FFAF6B6E308" symbolname="dunamis_http_onResponseHeaders"/>
<stackStatement index="4" address="0x00007FFAF6B6C433" symbolname="dunamis_http_onResponseHeaders"/>
<stackStatement index="5" address="0x00007FFBAEDDD072" symbolname="InternetCombineUrlW"/>
<stackStatement index="6" address="0x00007FFBAED05E26" symbolname="unknown"/>
<stackStatement index="7" address="0x00007FFBAED2E147" symbolname="InternetSetOptionA"/>
<stackStatement index="8" address="0x00007FFBAED5B67D" symbolname="Ordinal116"/>
<stackStatement index="9" address="0x00007FFBAEDFD5AC" symbolname="InternetSetOptionW"/>
<stackStatement index="10" address="0x00007FFBC20EFE01" symbolname="StrCmpNCW"/>
<stackStatement index="11" address="0x00007FFBC486BBBE" symbolname="RtlTryAcquireSRWLockShared"/>
<stackStatement index="12" address="0x00007FFBC487084E" symbolname="RtlSetThreadSubProcessTag"/>
<stackStatement index="13" address="0x00007FFBC3B2CCB7" symbolname="BaseThreadInitThunk"/>
<stackStatement index="14" address="0x00007FFBC48CAD6C" symbolname="RtlUserThreadStart"/>
</thread>
</backtrace>

This shows that the error happens when the program attempted to call the function “dunamis_http_onResponseHeaders”. Knowing that it was an issue with the program contacting the internet, I fully blocked Illustrator’s outbound network traffic in Windows Firewall. The program is no longer crashing, so that seems to have fixed it.

I really wish people on this forum would stop recommending to reset preferences - it does basically nothing to help.

creative explorer

Community Expert

@Sam365338998hlg Great catch. I would go one step further, and in your case, since Illustrator is unstable when it tries to sync to the Adobe’s servers, saveyour work locally first avoids the crash entirely. Only upload to the cloud only when you’re done for the day or done the whole work. I would also have version control as well like vers1, vers2, vers3, just in case (file corruption) — this has saved my butt a few times!

m

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