Flash CS5 crashing when saving

Report · May 19, 2010

OK! What's the deal?

I have just purchased Adobe Master Collection CS5, all $4400 worth! To give the software it's credit, I formatted my HDD and clean installed Win 7 x64 OS. I then clean installed the entire CS5 suite! As I have to somewhat justify the purchase to my boss (who paid for the software), I have gone to continue doing some work, (not even trying out new features!!), I needed to complete a task, so I got onto it.

I opened up an existing file which was created using CS4, noticed a few bugs that arose when published out using CS5 (mainly around the way that fonts were referred as), fixed those, then all was going well. As we have all done, I got involved with the work, and worked for a long time without saving. I realised this and quickly went to save. The dialog box came up advising that it needed to change versions to CS5 (rather than the original CS4), so I cancelled out and did a file Save As.

I thought I would create a new file so that if anything went wrong, I would have a backup. BLOODY LUCKY I DID, as when I went to save as, Flash crashed, loosing all the work I did. I did manage to get a screenshot of some of my AS which was lucky, but when I looked into the folder where I tried to save, there was a completley useless *.fla of 1kb in size which was completely corrupted and couldn't open up.

Resigned to the fact that I lost all my work (nothing new - as we all know it happens every now and then), I thought I would open up Flash, and the very first task would be to save it as CS5 format. Low and behold, flash crashes again, again leaving a corrupted file in it's place. For $4400, you would think you could at least save the work you have done!!

In other tests, it seems it can save new files, and some simple animations created in CS4, but what the hell do I do with all the existing work that I have spent the last year developing? Can someone please help me, as I really cannot work until this issue is resolved.

HELP!

Duncan Buchanan

Report · Jun 09, 2010

How much is it?

I want to finish it in web.

Report · Jun 12, 2010

I have been reading what seems to be ailing all of us... So is there a FIX? I don't want to lose anymore files, I have two FLA files that account for 100 hours of design time that I can't access. Can anyone tell me how to update or patch my system?

I have CS3, 4 and 5.

Please... Kevin

Report · Jun 12, 2010

Also, I want to keep using CS5 and that is the file format both FLAs are in that are corrupt.

Thanks... Kevin

Report · Jun 24, 2010

Same issue here. Crashing every time I save... But strangely enough, I CAN save the file in CS4 format (using CS5).

It seems every time I buy high-end software these days, it turns out to be worse than the previous version.

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Same problem or similar. Bigger problem is I cannot load the FLA anymore, even though it doesn't look corrupt - I think it's still the same size it was before. Is there someone I could send the file to for possibly having it fixed?

--

Toni Lehtinen

toni.lehtinen /AT sstmainos.fi

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Try rename your corrupted FLA to .zip and extract its contents. You should be able to salvage your library assets etc however your timeline is lost for good as far as I can tell. If you have an old version of your FLA you can replace the library assets with the newer copies but you'll likely still need to add stuff to stage again and set instance names. I've noticed that by saving as CS5 Uncompressed XFL I have not experienced any further data corruption for the past few weeks. Saving as .FLA is screwed though! Stay away from it until a patch comes out is my advice.

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Great, will try that. Thanks!

Report · Aug 13, 2011

How's it going, man? I did what you said. I saved the corrupted file as a zip, and extracted the contents. I.ve got a bunch of .xfl and ,xml files. I tried to open them in Flash, but they won't. Am I doing something wrong? How do I gain access to my library items now? Is there a specific program I need? Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Report · Jun 28, 2010

Too painful.

I've been managing along with the "missing armature" glitches that show up from time to time and even the tween oddities in CS5. But alas this morning i went to open my project (that I've been working on for weeks) and got the "Unexpected file format." error on opening. I checked the directory and sure enough my file was 1kb. I didn't even recall Flash crashing on save yesterday. But apparently CS5 chewed up my file.

For the record this was a new CS5 AS3 file on Windows Vista 64bit.

Ouch. It just hurts.

Report · Jun 29, 2010

Any updates on a fix for this VERY unstable version?

It seems trying to load an external .swf file crashes my application.

Any news? Better off using CS4...

Report · Jul 21, 2010

Finally some people that are going through this. I am experiencing these same save crashes and a very similar yet far more destructive and painful defect when exporting to swf. I am now only a few days away from losing my biggest and most important client to date because of this!! At least my export crash is throwing an exception error...Has this helped Adobe email me back or work with me over the phone..not even close.

Every time I export the movie it reaches 100% and it just sticks there until the following exception error appears:

"Exception thrown in destructor

(f:\dd\vctools\vc7libs\ship\atlmfc\src\mfc\winfrm.cpp:142)

Encountered an improper argument."

When this happens I end up with a 1KB swf file. Unfortunately, every time this dreading export failure happens I have to go back to a previous FLA for the project...The real kicker...Even if a previous FLA was always exporting just fine it will all of a sudden fail to export, even without making a single change to the FLA. If it fails to export ONE TIME this FLA file is forever useless. This problem has left me going back weeks, rebuilding and then boom, export freezes, you loose, do not collect $20,000. I am completely at a loss here and never once, in my entire career, have I felt so helpless. Your tech support is a joke and if I cant finish this project by the end of the week the entire contract gets ripped up.

Sorry everyone here for writing so much on a similar but different nightmare but I am doing everything I can to make my troubles and apparently those of many, known to Adobe. So far I have only fallen more and more behind. These are files created from scratch in CS5! This is insane to me!! I have been awake since Sunday trying to save this project and everything that was going to come of it. I should not be awake/alive right now.

Report · Jul 26, 2010

I have an fla which was created in flash 8, worked on and saved in cs4. But if opened and saved in CS5 (fla or uncompressed) then opened again in CS5, the IDE just crashes (every time). If you save it as CS4 then it opens ok. But its a pain to down save it as CS4 - adobe should atleast make this easy and quick!

Report · Jul 28, 2010

Not sure how practical of a solution this is for you, but it helped me solve the corruption problem with the affected assets (assuming they're images) and allowed me to finally save the fla in CS5 format.

So, we can tell which assets are corrupted when you select them in the library and it says 'Preview Not Available'. (Yeah, it wold be nice to detect these somehow using jsfl or something.) Anyways, if you have Photoshop, you can right click on that image and select 'Edit with Photoshop'. Apparently, just doing that alone will 'remove' the corruption of that asset. It's not even necessary to save the image in Photoshop. Once I found the 2-3 files that had this problem, I was able to save to CS5 format with everything else intact.

My images were blank and didn't have a use count, so it wasn't a big loss for me to even just delete them. However, if it's just a couple of files, then it's probably less painful to replace those than to muck with an unusable fla file. Hope this helps someone.

-Byrt

Report · Aug 14, 2010

Another one bites the dust here..

Opened Cs4 file, 4 hours later and various saves in between, tried to save once again and poof!!

(Unlike some of the other posts, I read, I was actually able to save twice before my final destination.)

Entire machine blanks out, had to force a hard reset, file is corrupted.

Thank you Adobe, for being huge pieces of shit and not properly testing your products, before seeding them into the market.

I truly hope your QC department or jackass exec that made the call not to Beta test, is left browsing the unemployment section.

As much as I love Flash, I'm starting to side with Steve Job's on this one.

Last upgrade I ever purchase.

Report · Aug 18, 2010

I just experienced this problem with a BRAND NEW CS5 AS3 file.

- It has NOTHING to do with conversion from CS4 to CS5,

- there were no corrupt assets in my library (I am a library cleanup maniac).

- I have lost hours of work.

- The movie used to compile properly, and everything worked fine.

- Just after last save, the file was corrupt.

ADOBE should give us an anwer ASAP (not pointing to corrupt assets in library, which in my case do not exist).

Besides, if I have corrupt assets in my library I expect a several hundreds $ package to WARN ME, and not to corrupt my work!

I am a full time Flash developer, and this is SABOTAGE.

Adobe?

thanks

Filippo

Report · Aug 18, 2010

As said earlier in this thread, I recommend just saving as CS5 uncompressed XFL instead of FLA until they work out a patch. Haven't had any crashes with XFL.

Report · Aug 29, 2010

I too am fond of the 'Sabotage' idea. Microsoft finally infiltrated the inner sanctum eh?

Report · Aug 18, 2010

I agree with you, xfl from now on.

Problem is: as you said earlier on this post.... just like many other people, I got to this post AFTER file was corrupt

I think I have found a solution to recover corrupt files, at least whats left of them...

I am investigating further and then will post it.

F

Report · Aug 18, 2010

I have found the solution to fix my file

In my case, I had to remove from the XML descriptor of a movieclip a reference to an FLVPlayback component! (don't ask me why)

I am pasting the XML node I had to remove on the bottom, first the step by step solution in case others may stumble on this.

It seems that movieclips get corrupt somehow, so, in order to find which ones, we have to proceed this way:

solution

1 - if you save your file as CS5 FLA, then rename the corrupt file from xxx.fla to xxx.zip.

2 - Unzip the file, and you are going to have the same directory structure as if you save in xfl. Now, if you open the xfl file inside the unzipped folder, you get the same error you get opening the fla.

3 - Go into the LIBRARY folder. This is a hyerarchical representation of your library.

4 - If like I do, your library is well organized in folders and subfolders, this step will not be too annoying. If you have all library items free in the library, then it could be boring. Anyway... The thing here is to find which library items are causing the problem, so you have to remove them one by one, or in groups, and try to launch the xfl each time. When the xfl gets opened, you have removed the right library item.

In my case, even for very large projects, I have only 4 folders in library's root. So what I did, I tried removing one of them, till I found the rightt one. Then I went deeper and deeper, and eventually found the **** movieclip causing the crash.

If its not an important item, you can just happily continue to work and do it again. In my case, it was a vital component, so I went inside the xml definition, and tried to remove nodes untill it finally opened.

TAHDAH

The file got opened again, just with a missing reference inside that movieclip.

I have read that often an empty frame may cause the problem, so you should look for <element/> tag.

In my case, was a FLVPlayback component.

Find below the node I had to remove (someone from Adobe may give a look)

It is advised untill Flash CS5 doesn't get stabilized on file save (yeah, I know, a detail!) to store your projects as xfl and not as FLA files. (I don't really know why, since a fla file is just a zipped xfl folder renamed as .fla)

Exhausted but happy.

Filippo

Report · Oct 19, 2010

I have the feeling it's a saving to a network problem.

If you're reading this and have this problem, are you saving to a network drive? If so, does the problem still occur when saving to a regular hard disk?

I have the same problem that flash CS5 crashes during saves. This problem does not seem to occur when I save to a hard disk. (At home I work with files on my hard disk, but at work I work with files that are on a server). I work on a laptop and use Windows 7 64-bit and Flash CS5 (updated to the last version available for this date).

If a server save is the problem then this might have to do that a small (maybe even a milisecond) of server interuption that causes flash to freeze up when during the file writing, resulting in a crash during save. If that's the case, it could be fixed easily right?

I sure hope so, I lost quite a few hours en my folders are full of saved versions of 1 project.

Cheers,

Niels

Report · Oct 19, 2010

In my case it happened when saving to a local hard disk. I copied a

bunch of library symbols from a CS4 FLA into a CS5 FLA, tried to save >

crash > could not load CS5 FLA anymore. The FLA:s were in different folders.

No problems since saving every project as XFL instead of FLA.

19.10.2010 14:16, nbshark123 kirjoitti:

I have the feeling it's a saving to a network problem.

If you're reading this and have this problem, are you saving to a network drive? If so, does the problem still occur when saving to a regular hard disk?

Report · Oct 19, 2010

Maybe it's divided into two different problems. One occurs when saving from CS4 to CS5 and one to saving to a Network drive.

My experience is that a file does not crash when working on a hard disk and the project being started in Flash CS5.

Report · Nov 01, 2010

I don't know why this discussion is marked as 'Answered'!? It is NOT answered! The discussion has started on May, it is November now, a few dozens of complaints from many people and... still NO fix and NO explanation!

The problem IS: Flash CS5 instantly crashes when saving.

I experience the problem every few minutes when saving. Then I have to restart the program and start over again where I ended with correct save (happily I haven't got corupt files... yet).

I do not work with resaved CS4 file - The original file was created in CS5 from scratch.
There are no corrupt assets in file library (actually there are only a few MovieClips at all in my library and no external assets).
I do not save file over network, but to a local disk

And 'explanation' about 'corrupt assets' seems too odd after all... who cares? People pay money and for their money they get their time and work lost!!

So, will we actually get any reply from Adobe? Is it going to be fixed? All of us have already lost quite a lot of time because if this issue, so I think it is worth attention finally.

Report · Nov 03, 2010

You're right, Artoix, personally I've switched to recommending unobtrusive Javascript (allowing for accessibility too, where rqd), since there's so much free JS awesomeness out there now, sorry Adobe - too much pain and anguish and not enough healing balm.

Report · Nov 04, 2010

Well, I think even though recent advancement in HTML and JS technologies gave quite robust tools for web development, these tools can not completely replace Flash. I'm not a fan of 'Flash vs. JS (or HTML5)' talks. I believe these two technologies have their own purpose and are not always interchangeable: for web applications - yes, for rich media presentations - hardly HTML/JS can replace Flash. ... but this talk is not for this topic.

After these troubles I've switched to saving as CS4 format (happily current project allows me to use CS4 format). But this is very inconvenient as I always have to us 'Save as' command and going through two prompting dialogs. %( For CS5 project I would probably try saving in uncompressed CS5 format... until Adobe actually release some patch to fix this problem.

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Flash CS5 crashing when saving

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