Express VPN cause a slow start to Affter Effects

[Baddog II]

To All,
I was wrestling all day with an issue with Adobe After Effects.  Every time I started Adobe After Effects there was an approximately 4 min. delay from the time the applications actually loaded and the home screen delay appeared.  In the title bar of AE, it was showing "Not Responding".  After waiting the ~4min.  the Home Screen would load.  I spent hours trying to figure out what the slowdown was.  I update all the cache directories to an SSD,  I through out preferences, etc...  Nothing worked.  I then read a forum thread about a person using a work laptop and because he/she was not connecting through their work's VPN as they normally would, if he was at the office it was causing the same kind of slowdown.  

This did not really apply to me, because I was on my local home desktop system and never had this issue until I updated to the latest version after upgrading my GPU card. (Adobe's 2023 Updates required the updated graphics card).  On my local system, I do use a VPN, almost exclusively, Express VPN. So just to test a ridiculous hunch, I turned off my Express VPN, and wouldn't you know, it freakin' worked.  AE loaded in as little as 10 seconds, go figure!

I am going to contact Express VPN to see if they are aware of this issue as well.  I hope the gurus at Adobe will respond with some insight into why this would happen.

Regards All

[Mylenium]

why this would happen.

VPNs simply usurp all ports and connections and Adobe apps being stuffed to the brim with all this online stuff will of course be sensitive to this. I'm sure you could configure your VPN in some way to better pass through the relevant data without filtering it.

Mylenium

[Baddog II]

Hello Mylenium,
But I have had this same VPN for years, and I have been using the entire Adobe Creative suite even longer.  I have never had this issue before.  Also, why is it only After Effects and not Premiere Pro or Photoshop?

This just started happening after the latest update.

Regards