Inspiring

Answered

UI Glitch in Illustrator 2019 on Windows 10 system

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
August 8, 2019
6 replies
6006 views

Hello,

What's going on:

I occasionally get this weird graphical glitch with my UI on Illustrator. It's happened to me a handful of times, and I can't seem to find what's causing it. I've tried to replicate it many times, but it seems to happen at random. However, I found that the glitch seems to happen more frequently the more I alt+tab out of the app. I can't for sure say that this is the cause, because it genuinely feels that the glitch happens at random, even if I don't alt+tab.

The Problem:

I have made a video showcasing the glitch as it happens. (I blurred out any work-related files in my CC Library)

The app becomes virtually unusable whenever this glitch occurs. The UI will become black, and nothing is clickable. I still manage to get system prompts whenever I attempt to close the app, (save warnings, etc.) but they're invisible. The first sign that the glitch is happening, is that the font will change on the UI, taking the form of a "DOS-style" font. Whenever I see that, I know the glitch is about to happen, and there's nothing I can do to prevent it. Attempting to save will cause the black bars seen in the video.

In the video, I try to do various commands; Ctrl+Z, Shift+Ctrl+Z, Moving objects, etc.

Hardware & Software Info:

(All drivers are up-to-date)

DELL Precision Tower 3620

Processor: Intel Xeon E3-1270 v5 @ 3.60GHz

GPU: NVIDIA Quadro P2000

RAM: 32 GB

System: Windows 10 64-bit

Illustrator Version: 23.0.3

I realize there most likely won't be a hotfix to fix my very specific issue, but it's worth taking note of, in case this happens to anyone else. Maybe some staff can explain what's going on.

Either way, thanks!

{Renamed by MOD}

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer McNamara806

2024 UPDATE: Looks like I may have found a potential cause!

It looks like there's a GDI leak causing Illustrator to crash. I'm not an expert by any means, but I believe when these objects reach 10,000 Illustrator starts to glitch out. If anyone else is having this issue, could you please confirm by checking the prcoesses in task manager?

**Do this WHILE the glitch is occuring, do NOT close Illustrator while doing this, or it will not work!

Open task manager
Click on"details"
Right click on a column. (like "status" or "memory")
Click "select column"
Check "GDI objects"
Click "OK"
Check the GDI number for "illustrator.exe"
If this number is ~9,990 this could be your potential cause.

I will do some more observing, but this is the closest thing I could find to a possible cause. Perhaps a step in the right direction?

M

McNamara806AuthorCorrect answer

Inspiring

2024 UPDATE: Looks like I may have found a potential cause!

It looks like there's a GDI leak causing Illustrator to crash. I'm not an expert by any means, but I believe when these objects reach 10,000 Illustrator starts to glitch out. If anyone else is having this issue, could you please confirm by checking the prcoesses in task manager?

**Do this WHILE the glitch is occuring, do NOT close Illustrator while doing this, or it will not work!

Open task manager
Click on"details"
Right click on a column. (like "status" or "memory")
Click "select column"
Check "GDI objects"
Click "OK"
Check the GDI number for "illustrator.exe"
If this number is ~9,990 this could be your potential cause.

I will do some more observing, but this is the closest thing I could find to a possible cause. Perhaps a step in the right direction?

Z

ZivoDesign

Known Participant

Happening to me every day, Adobe shame on you, it's embarrassing, Fix it

M

McNamara806Author

Inspiring

For all those reading this thread, frustrated:

Adobe community staff has seemingly abandoned this thread. You will not find a fix here, sorry. It feels as though I have been answering those facing similar issues in this thread, rather than the actual staff. I have sent in two different support tickets, and both have given me the same answers MikeGondek, and Srishti Bali have given me, even though I have specified their answers are not the correct solution to the problem.

As I stated above, I have been using Affinity Designer for months now, with no issues. That seems to be the only "fix," sorry. I'm marking this answer as correct, as Adobe staff has not given me, or anyone else, a straight answer.

Good luck to everyone else facing this issue! I am also abandoning this thread.

Waldek Węgrzyn

Participant

I experience exactly the same issue @ HP Ellite Book 8570w workstation, NVidia Quadro K2000M, Windows 10. It drives mi crazy, since I need to restart the application few times a day. I tried many solutions, including updating NVidia drivers, but it didn't help. I use AI a lot working with quite complex files and this glitch makes it a nightmare. It hasn't been fixed for a long time, so moving to another vector editor seems the only solution.

M

McNamara806Author

Inspiring

I have since switched over to Affinity Designer. It has great customer support, and far fewer glitches. It's a shame that Adobe never seemed to fix this issue, and have completely abandoned finding a solution, as I have seen other threads similar to this one, with no apparent fix. 2 years later, and still no answer. Wild.

M

McNamara806Author

Inspiring

Posting here again because the problem still persists in the latest version of Illustrator. It's even happening on my personal computer, which is more beefy than my work computer. UI becomes completely unusable, with black bars appearing everywhere. Only happens with Illustrator. I have done everything from resetting my preferences, to launching directly from Creative Cloud. A fresh install doesn't seem to help, either. At this point, I'm very close to switching from Illustrator to another vector program. This has taken up too much of my time since August. I cannot go through a whole work week without this glitch happening multiple times.

**All drivers are up to date. My Nvidia Card is brand new, and I have tested it extensively for any hardware faults.

Z

zfannin

Participant

Just chiming in that I have had the same glitch using Windows 10 (always updated), Illustrator 2020 (and previous versions), and nVidia GPUs (regardless of driver version). I just did a clean install of Windows and all of my software and system drivers, and the problem persists. I don't know what's causing it, but it seems like it happens over time during a long work session. Which, unfortunately, is every day.

M

McNamara806Author

Inspiring

Unfortunately, there have been no fixes as far as I'm concerned. You're right. This glitch usually happens after a long work day. That being said, sometimes it happens at random intervals. As a matter of fact, it happened again today while working on another project for about 2 hours. I've been using Affinity Designer over Illustrator most days, but will sometimes go back to Illustrator. It's very frustrating that the Adobe team can't replicate this bug, and that a fix hasn't been looked into.

Do you have a prebuilt Dell computer by any chance? I find that my work computer encounters this bug more frequently than my custom-built computer back home. My work computer is a prebuilt Dell with an NVIDIA Quadro P2000 GPU inside. I also find it interesting that we've both encountered this bug while using NVIDIA GPUs. Also, this may have nothing to do with it, but what HDD are you using? I'm using a Seagate Desktop HDD ST2000DM001. They're notoriously bad HDDs, so if we can narrow that down as a common denominator, maybe that could be the cause of our issue?

Mike_Gondek10189183

Community Expert

Try Ctrl E to toggle GPU preview. Looks to the right of filename to see what mode you are ini.

M

McNamara806Author

Inspiring

Thanks for the reply, Mike.

Unfortunately, that doesn't fix the issue. The screen just stays the same, and flickers occasionally.
I wonder if the issue lies within the DELL Workstation I'm using. I used to have another DELL Workstation that did the same thing, specifically with Illustrator. The personal computer that I built, doesn't seem to get this issue. Which is bizarre, considering the prebuilt Workstation is technically better spec-wise. It could also be a huge coincidence.

Srishti Bali

Community Manager

Hi Orlie,

Thanks for reaching out. I could see that the panels are black. That's definitely not a usual behavior with Illustrator.

I would request if you can try the following steps and share your observations:

1. The first thing which I would suggest is turning of GPU performance from Illustrator preferences (Edit > Preferences > Performance ) and see if that helps. If yes, try updating the GPU drivers from NVidia's website: Download Drivers | NVIDIA

2. If that doesn't help try resetting preferences:

Close all Adobe applications.
Go to Locations C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Adobe and.
Rename Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Illustrator 23 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator 23 Settings.old
Launch Illustrator from the Creative Cloud.

This way all your existing settings will be saved in old folders and Illustrator will launch with default settings.

3. If nothing works log in to Safe mode (How to Boot into Safe Mode On Windows 10 (3 Ways) - YouTube ) and check how it works there.

Looking forward to your response!

Regards,

Srishti

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