Complete Fallout, preview not working, excessive freezing and crashing without crashreport prompt

[KekxKadda]

Hi there,

so I have a massive problem with After Effects and I could not find anything about it. I only work with AE from time to time, I mainly use it for 2D Motion Graphics. After 2 months of not using AE at all, a new small project came in a week ago. I opened a new project file and could not get anything done. The preview kept being just black, me clicking on anything or scrolling lead to crashes with no warning and no crash reports in 9 out of 10 times. When I finally managed to create a solid and a textlayer everything froze again and crashed. I thought, this was my PC finally giving up, since it had been giving me hard time for some while now as it became increasingly slow and laggy (not just concerning AE). So I went ahead and got a new one configured, hoping this would simply fix the issue as well (naive me). AE freshly installed, the problems stay the same. Crashing, freezing, blacked out preview. Crashing does not prompt a crash report, freezing does not lead to the weird endless circle appearing. I tried different versions (all that are available at least, 17.7 to 18.1). Nothing changed. 

So my only guess is that it has something to do with the GPU because that is the only piece that has not been replaced by something new due to shortings. But I have no idea how to figure out what to do. For me this is just a hobby... I am greatful for any help or advice.

Specs:

Windows 10 Pro

Intel i9 10900KF

Nvidia GTX 1070

48 GB DDR4 RAM

AE is installed on the main SSD

After Effects Versions 18.1 and 17.7

[Byron Cortez · Accepted solution]

Start by installing the updated drivers for your GPU, it seems that it needs to be updated.

[KekxKadda]

Thank you very much, it has worked! Tried that already before but must have done something wrong back then. 

[Byron Cortez]

You're welcome! 

[KekxKadda]

Hi, really sorry to bother you again... 

i got hopefull a little to quickly. Updating the driver has helped somewhat, I can now open a project and at least start working. I managed to create a very simple logo animation with changing opacity and a light sweep effect but that took an awful amount of time, since all the errors described above still keep happening, just 20% less frequent. I guess it has to be the GPU. I am not sure but I think it even crashed completly twice today, if that's possible: Once my monitor entered powersaving mode because it was no longer getting any signal and the only way to shut down the PC was by pressing the power button.

Would your guess as well be that it is a hardware problem? I thought the GTX 1070 would be fine for another year but it could also be that it is damaged because it was first used in a prebuild pc where a way to weak powersupply was build in. If that makes any sense...