After Effects fails to launch, crashes on startup after mediacore

[kevbot]

After effects will not launch, last thing on splash screen is mediacore, not even as admin in safe mode with no 3rd party plugins and reset preferences.

Posted here because it seemed to start when using After Effects, but no Adobe video apps will load. AfterFX 25.4 and 23.6, PPro 25.4 and 23.6.8, Media Encoder 25.4 all crash at splash screen. Photoshop loads OK, but I thought Creative Cloud app was very sluggish for a while too, though now it's OK.

Dell XPS 15 9520, i7-12700H, 64GB RAM, RTX 3050 laptop
Windows 11 24H2 latest update KB5063878
After Effects 25.4 and 23.6
Premiere 25.4 and 23.6.8
Media Encoder 25.4

I don't use many scripts or plugins, but had recently installed a script "DuplicateFrameRemover.jsxbin" into After Effects by copying this file into Support Files/Scripts/ScriptUI Panels. It worked well for a day or two across restarts. When this problem occurred I removed but issue persisted. If this didn't cause it then this is pretty random, but there are constant windows updates. NEAT video has been installed for months without issue.

What I have tried so far:
After Effects and Premiere versions are most recent
System BIOS is most recent
Windows 11 is most recent
Tried the most common After Effects fixes: safe mode, reset preferences, disable plugins
Ran "Adobe creative cloud diagnostics" app, reset Premier Pro preferences, no other suggestions were offered
No dock or external display
Latest NVIDIA driver
Deleted after effects temp files from AppData folder
Moved plugins from mediacore folder to a temp folder
Un-installed/re-installed after effects
Running as administrator allowed it to load on a couple of occasions after renaming folders in Appdata to "old", but this is not fixed.

Finally a specific on screen error occurred once:

"After Effects error: Crash in progress. Last logged message was: <23564> <GPUFoundation><5> Done loading modules, sec: 0537506, device:Open CL(1)

[David.Arbor]

Hey @kevbot, sorry about the issues. I just checked our crash logging system and don't see anything with the email tied to this forum account in the last 30 days. Are you getting the Crash Reporter dialog at all? If so, did you maybe fill it in with a different email address?

Can you follow the steps in this support article to see if permissions are the issue?
https://adobe.ly/4dpxOiN

Lastly, you haven't renamed a file called GPUSniffer.exe on disk, have you?

Thanks,
- David, After Effects Engineering Team

[kevbot]

Thank you for your help! I did send in the crashes using crash reporter, I think three of them using this address in the last couple days. But I can easily generate more! I could paste a log in here if it's not getting through. At first AfterFX was only generating DMP files and no logs, which seems like maybe it couldn't write to that folder? Whereas PPro wrote logs from the beginning. 

Should I be setting permissions for Media Encoder too? Is this all so mongled that I need to completely remove all traces of Adobe and start over?

Anyway I will follow those steps and reply back soon, thanks again

[Paul Uu]

I would also suggest (temporarily) uninstalling Neat Video.

The Last logged message seems to indicate somehting is going awry with our applications connection to your GPU, which is something Neat might possibly be interfering with now (even if it hadn't in the past).

[kevbot]

Thanks to all for your help. I went through the permissions tree and all seemed normal. I had not renamed GPUsniffer. David suggested uninstalling Neat but that had no effect on the issue. He also commented on previous conditions coming back, and I used to use an eGPU. Someone commented somewhere that they had a similar situation and used DDU to clean out old drivers, so I tried this but it did not seem to help or harm in my case.

If it's time to do a clean install of all Adobe apps and creative cloud app, what is the procedure? Uninstall in CC first, or through windows? Should I use Creative Cloud Cleaner tool? Or if you have any other ideas, please let me know! Thanks again for yout help!

[kevbot]

I went to my windows 10 box so I could keep working, updated after effects, and it now does the same thing. I sent a crash report with this email addy. It also crashed PPro like the other win 11 machine. So I'm frozen until resolved. Maybe Windows update? But the win10 box is still on KB5062554. These two computers that are crashing adobe at launch are pretty unrelated, other than being attached to my license, and having the most recent adobe updates.

There have never been network drives mapped, though occasional file sharing on LAN.

[David.Arbor]

Well that's no good. I'm still not seeing a crash log show up in our system with your email address. To be clear, are you trying to work in the same project and it's crashing on both machines? Or just opening AE on both machines is crashing?

If it's a specific project, what happens if you create a blank one and import your project into the new one?

As for completely uninstalling, here's the support article on how to use the Creative Cloud Cleaner tool.

Before doing that, though, generating logs might be more helpful since we're not getting the crash report. 

• Open the Help menu

• Select "Enable Logging" and close AE when prompted.

• Relaunch AE and reproduce the crash.

• Go to "C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\25.4\logs"

• Upload and share a link to the "After Effects Log.txt" file in the "logs" folder

To keep the logs as clean as possible, make sure you don't do anything except reproduce the issue.

Thanks,

- David, After Effects Engineering Team

[kevbot]

Sorry to hammer this thread! I thought to generate you a crash report, but After Effects loaded successfully! I created a project and it worked OK. I tried to load PPro as well but it crashed, I sent you a report. I closed and tried to reopen AfterFX but it crashed as well, sending you a report. 

So it does load occasionally, maybe 1 out of 20 times? I can see GPUsniffer loading each time. I just tried loading AfterFX 10 times with no successes. I don't know if you caught that my win 10 box has the same issue, never used a eGPU there in the past. 

Win 10 Pro, 10.0.19045

ASUS motherboard i7-11700K 128GB RAM

RTX something, I think 2070

After Effects 25.4

[kevbot]

Sorry our messges crossed. I will do nothing more unless you approve! I have checked the email of this account and that's the one I'm signing the crash reports with. I'll send a log manually as you requested, from both machines, before attempting uninstall. If I uninstall, do it from windows or from CC app?

I can't load AfterFX, PPro or Media Encoder on either machine. Cannot even load app to make a project, crashes on splash screen.

[kevbot]

I can't open AfterFX to get to the help menu to enable logging. I can't open any Adobe video app on any machine. There is one log in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\25.4\logs from the last attempt which looks relevant.

• Upload and share a link to the "After Effects Log.txt" file in the "logs" folder

I don't see how to upload here, do you mean upload to the cloud somewhere and put the link in a reply?

[David.Arbor]

Yeah, that's fine. I would also try to clear your preferences on one of the machines. Press Ctrl + Alt + Shift (Windows) or Command + Option + Shift (Mac OS) while launching After Effects. You can release the keys when you see the Startup Repair Options dialogue box.

As for uninstalling, either method should work, but also make sure to read the Cleaner article thoroughly for those steps. 

Thanks,
- David, After Effects Engineering Team

[kevbot]

Because it's failing to load it offers me the chance to try safe mode, reset preferences, manage plugins or continue each time a try to run. I have tried all of these options many times, as well as run as administrator. I have tried control alt shift at your request but it doesn't load a dialogue box.

I am DMing you a link to the logs, one for After Effects and one for PPro. I think when it crashes it's supposed to write one whether or not logging is turned on. I always enter my email but it seldom writes one to the logs folder in AppData. Crash Report just closes and I guess can't send anything. Not being able to write a log seemed at first to maybe be a permissions thing, but permissions look OK and it will write a log occasionally, but never to the 25.4 folder, just in the folder above.

It looks like the windows 10 box which has the same problem can't write crash logs either. The only thing these machines have in common is my account and having run the latest Adobe updates.

[kevbot]

I uninstalled all adobe apps and CC from the windows 10 machine, reinstalled with the same results. Log files were not generated to the logs folder. I also tried version 24.0. Attached are some on screen CUDA errors that were kicked out. What would suddenly make two otherwise stable systems start crashing on GPU issues? Just to be clear, AEX, PPro and ME all went belly up on all my computers at the same time in the same way after last update. I can't open any of these programs.

[David.Arbor]

I'm really sorry to hear everything is turning into a disaster. For something this catastrophic to affect multiple applications on multiple machines, I would guess the GPU driver could be at fault here. I should have asked this earlier, but you said you were running "the latest Nvidia driver." Which one exactly, and is it the Game Ready or Studio driver? We recommend the Studio driver when running Adobe apps. If you do have the latest Studio driver, then I would try rolling back to the last version. I know a new Game Ready driver was just released a few days ago (actually, I think it was the same day you originally posted).

Thanks,
- David, After Effects Engineering Team

[kevbot]

I only updated the nvidia driver on one of the affected machines, win 11, and only after this problem arose, not before. This did not happen right after a driver update. I have only used studio driver and do not play games. The other machine is win 10 and I have done nothing but uninstall/reinstall of CC and all apps.

Did you receive the two logs I DM'ed to you?

[David.Arbor]

I did just see them, but unfortunately, those aren't AE or Premiere logs and don't contain any informationr elated to the crash. Understood about the driver, but I do think it's worth trying maybe the last Studio driver just in case the driver itself got corrupted, is having problems, or something else I'm not aware of.

When a new driver is installed, a lot of things change. Shaders get recompiled, GPU "stuff" (vague, I know, but I couldn't give you specifics) gets rebuilt, and problems can be solved.

I'm suggesting this as a troubleshooting method (along with a machine restart after) simply beacause you're in such a bind, and I want to try anything that can get you up and running again.

- David, After Effects Engineering Team

[kevbot]

Thank you David, I'll give it a try this morning. If this doesn't work what do you think about trying a very thorough uninstall? It seems Creative Cloud cleaner tool leaves the directory structure and AppData, User\Documents etc, probably stuff in the registry, and after total cleaning and re-install it still asks me if I wish to migrate old settings, and it knows it's recovering from a crash on the other side of being uninstalled. Is there a way to start fresh? I might want a procedure for the right way to really clean that stuff out. Anyway, I'll try an old driver, though my point is it was old drivers on both machines at the time this happened, .

Sad about the logs. If I can ever get it to load I'll try to enable it in the help menu.

[kevbot]

It just loaded! Some kind of race condition then? Is there anything we would like to do while it's open? I can enable logging, but it's activated on restart which is pretty rare. System compatibility says no conflicts. GPU workload seems normal in task manager.

It says the location of logs is \Users\<me>\AppData\Local\Temp\Adobe\After Effects\25.0\ There is no text log file there, but it wrote a folder there named SentryIO-db. There are a few files and subfolders there. There is last_crash file which is sadly empty 0 bytes but is correctly timestamped with last crash, as is the whole folder. There is a DMP file in there containing moonspeak which is about 6 MB. I have DM'd the SentryIO-db folder to you. I don't know if this is of any use, but it's something. Enjoy! And thank you. I'll keep AfterFX open if I can.

[David.Arbor]

Oh wow, that is something! I mean, Enabling Logging and restarting AE, then getting the problem to happen again is probably the best outcome here. I got your sentry report and I can send it to some folks to see if it's helpful. It's possible the report just isn't getting uploaded to our system, but the local folder you sent is what should have gotten uploaded.

And race conditions are always possible, and of course, incredibly tricky to track down. I know this is happening on two different machines, but my gut says something is causing a conflict other than an app update.

As for a completely clean install, the CC Cleaner tool has worked for me every time over the years when other methods didn't, even if it does leave files behind.

One other troubleshooting method I like to try is a brand new user account with no extra apps. Create a test account, launch AE, then see if it crashes. If it does, it could point to something system-wide.

-David, After Effects Engineering Team 

[David.Arbor · Accepted solution]

@kevbot I have some potentially good news! 

That local sentry report pinpointed the crash to Blackmagic software. There are apparently some versions of BMD software that crash our products, so the solution should be to uninstall or update your BMD tools.

I really hope this helps!

-David, After Effects Engineering Team 

[kevbot]

Thank you for your patience David, it worked! That's been on there forever, but it chose that moment to interfere.

Logging turned on.

[David.Arbor]

That's fantastic! I'm so glad to hear that. And thank you for your patience and continued willingness to troubleshoot. Everybody's configuration is so different, and we all have a million different third-party tools installed, so issues like this are particulary tricky to track down.

You don't need to have logging enabled since we solved the problem, but it will shut off 24 hours after enabling if you leave it alone. 

Thanks,
- David, After Effects Engineering Team