Series of Errors when starting up After Effects CC 2018

[wh1chkraft]

Does anyone else have this issue on Mac OSX?

When I open up AE 2018.0 15.0.1, the loading image appears and before it disappears I see the following sequence of events:

     -A dialog box appears with "After effects warning: Can't write to font cache directory." Upon clicking ok, the dialog box doesn't disappear and gives me a new dialog box with the following:

     -"After Effects ( 83 :: 2 ) After Effects error: string memory leak" -- upon clicking ok on that box, it gets replaced with the next one:

     -"After Effects can't continue: unexpected failure during application startup"

And then it crashes completely. I don't see the application open at all. Anyone know how I can even begin to fix this error? I have uninstalled, restarted computer, re-signed-into Creative Cloud, etc. I was on OS Sierra when this first began, and since I've tried updating to High Sierra and still nothing's changed.

Any help would be appreciated -- thanks.

[kglad]

reset your preferences -   http://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/preferences.html

[moved from Creative Suites to After Effects]

[wh1chkraft]

Hi,

I can't actually open the app at all so can't access the preferences dialog box within AE. I did try the default preferences reset and that didn't work either.

Any other ideas?

[davidarbor · Accepted solution]

Just to make sure you reset your preferences, go to this path: ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/15.0

and temporarily rename or remove it. That will guarantee a fresh set of preferences for Ae.

I don't think fresh preferences will solve the issue, though, as the error explicitly states that Ae can't write to the Font Cache directory. There could be a permissions issue here. Do you have an "Adobe" folder in this location? ~/Library/Caches/Adobe

If not, try creating one. If you do, Get Info on it, change permissions to Read and Write and click the Gear icon at the bottom-left of the window and click "Apply to enclosed items."

[wh1chkraft]

Thank you. I was missing the cache folder. Weird.

[Yol3rHD]

Way of doing this on a Windows OS?

[JonahOS · Accepted solution]

Solved! This was the answer: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects/ae-2017-or-2018-crashes-on-launch-font-cache-not-font-d...

David, 

I'm having the exact same issue. My problem is that I can't locate the folders you're referring to because I have a bunch of different library folders. I'm not sure what ~ means. I looked at all the library folders and didn't find preferences/adobe/after effecets. I have After Effects CC 2020, with a user library in it. Even if I found the correct directory I don't know the exact name of the folder/folder structure I'm supposed to type in. I've also reinstalled after effects, restarted, etc. It's strange to me that it didn't rebuild these folders on startup. Thanks for any help.