Solved this after experiencing on two different laptops.

Firstly, confirm where the crash is coming from… whether via Illustrator itself or external app/process. Do this by opening Windows Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Application… you’ll likely see an error for every time Illustrator crashed with more details within.

Fix… 

1. Open Windows Defender Firewall
2. Advanced Settings
3. Outbound Rules
4. Click New Rule > Program (Next) > Find the program path for the .exe (the one in the crash log)  i.e %ProgramFiles%\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator 2026\Support Files\Contents\Windows\Illustrator.exe (Next) > Block the connection (Next) > Check box of Domain, Private, and Public (Next) > Give it a name and click Finish.

Problem solved. 

My Illustrator has recently started to glitch out and freeze. After reviewing the changes to the GPU preferences as indicated. It still does the same thing and freezes. Is there a way to go back to the previous version of Illustrator?

repair ms visual c++ redistribitale

This worked for me.  I wish i found it early.  Thank you!

I had the same issue. Did the above, nothing helped. Then my IT guy helped to install the latest GPU driver (GeForce RTX 4070) and freed up a lot of my C drive space. It worked.

Hi buddy

check response below.

Disable the "Home Screen" & Cloud Background Tasks

The latest Illustrator updates rely heavily on "Creative Cloud Desktop" services that run in the background. If these hang, they freeze Illustrator and Windows Explorer (which controls your Start Menu).

• Go to: Edit > Preferences > General.

• Uncheck: "Show the Home Screen when no documents are open."

• Uncheck: "Auto-show Adobe Stock and Marketplace."

• Go to: Preferences > File Handling.

• Change: Set "Save in Background" to Off.

• Disable: "Automatically Save Recovery Data" (Temporarily, to see if the disk-writing process is causing the freeze).

Clear the Font Cache

A single "bad" or corrupt font can cause Illustrator to hang shortly after launch as it tries to index your library.

1. Close Illustrator and the Creative Cloud app.

2. Navigate to: C:\Users\[User]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator [Version] Settings\en_US\x64.

3. Delete the folder named "Adobe Illustrator Cloud Prefs."

4. Also, go to C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator [Version] and clear the FontCache folder.

i faced same issue while making Mockups of Custom baseball Uniforms for my Customers. 

So i used this options and it works. 

I hope you can solve your problem. 

Regards, 

MimiSports USA

I have had a similar issue except it also doesn't seem to save. I spent a few hours on adding to my document, saved, then later on tried to open the file and the updates were gone. Tried again and the same thing. It's not the first time this happens and I'm worried constant illustrator crashes are going to cost me my degree as it almost has in the past, causing me to do consistent all nighters in order to recover the lost work to submit. It's really a joke. I've lost hours and days as well as nights because of adobe illustrator. I also bought a new computer with 32gb ram as i thought the last computer was inadequate for the software but turns out it is just the software. It's really extremely frustrating and adobe really should be doing better. It's incredibly stressful when tutors expect work which I can't present, not because of poor time management or because it hasn't been done, but because of Illustrator constantly and consistently crashing... or not saving

Same shit here.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8565U
RAM 20 GB
NVIDIA GeForce MX110
Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620

Can you tell us a few details about your system and hardware?

Did you already try and reset the preferences?

What kind of graphic card and driver is it?