InDesign 21.x Shows Error 3, Unresponsive Menus, and Cannot Open or Create Documents

Thanks for all your comments. Glad to report problem has been solved. Apparent cause: working on InDesign document while it was on a thumb drive resulted in the corruption. I clicked on what appeared to be an AI helper on Adobe and it walked me through clearing the auto recovery (which meant INDD opened up for new documents just fine) and then helped me use WordPad to retrieve a portion of the text of the corrupt document. I had sent the document to Adobe, where its website said it could help with corrupt documents, and got a speedy but negative response from a human---said document was completely untrievable. (Hmmm...) The advice was to NEVER work on a document on a thumb or external hard drive because both are likely to be unstable. The recent I was working on external drives was that I had no memory left on my hard drive, a result of being told (ahem, by a family member) to always turn off the desktop every night. I now know that it must be left on at least once a week for self-cleaning. 

Hi ​@Linda24255760hnv6,

I'm sorry to hear the issue has become more severe. Based on your latest updates, this appears to be different from the original Generative AI freeze issue, especially since you're now seeing Error 3 messages, greyed-out menus, and are unable to create new documents.

Could you please confirm your exact InDesign version and Windows version? It would also be helpful to know whether this behavior occurs with all documents or only with more recent files.

In the meantime, please test the issue after starting Windows in Safe Mode and let us know whether the behavior persists there:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode-in-windows-92c27cff-db89-8644-1ce4-b3e5e56fe234

I'd also recommend testing from a new local Windows user account to help determine whether the issue is related to your current user profile:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/manage-user-accounts-in-windows-104dc19f-6430-4b49-6a2b-e4dbd1dcdf32

If possible, please share a screenshot of the Error 3 message along with a short screen recording showing the application launch, the greyed-out menus, and the inability to create a new document.

If the issue still persists, please run the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool to completely remove InDesign, then reinstall it and test again before opening any recovered documents:
https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/cc-cleaner-tool-installation-problems.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/apps/troubleshoot/diagnostics-repair-tools/run-creative-cloud-cleaner-tool.html

Please let us know your observations, and we'll continue investigating this with you.

Best,
Abhishek

Hi Linda, 

If turning off Generative AI in Preferences isn’t helping, you might need to reset InDesign preferences.