Cursor flickers and deselects menues

[Micke_be]

Hi, I'm using Illustrator CC 2015.3 on a Surface Pro 3 with Windows 10 and every time I start it up the cursor begins (and never ends) flickering it's loading state. I also cannot open menues (they immediately close) or use shortcuts. The program seems to be pulling most of my CPU in this idle state, and the cursor continues flickering when using other programs aswell (such as this browser window). Bug does not appear in any other CC application, but renders Illustrator more or less unresponsive.

Have tried uninstalling Wacom drivers, running as admin, resetting preferences, clean uninstalling (AdobeCreateiveCloudCleanerTool) and re-installing. Also tried the new 2017 Beta with same results.

[MarcinKrzyzaniak]

I have a relatively fresh Windows 10 install (1,5 month), and i do not think i have a free time for another reinstall, especially i know the same problem is with new 2017 illustrator ( i have tried last beta version), but then there is no possibility to delete one file. You can but then You will not have whole file/new menu. So problem is with this exactly new ugly "open file" module and i hope it will be patched soon, at least in the 2017 version.

[MLDerksen]

Hi, I had the same problem with Illustrator CC 2017 and even Photoshop CC 2017 didn't start at all. Today I downloaded free AdwCleaner from Malwarebytes and did a complete system scan. It found 58 potential threats, all related to "Lavasoft Web Companion". I deleted all files and registry entries and Yes! – all Adobe apps are starting as usual. I restored the icudtl.dat in the Illustrator folder and everything is working fine! Hope this helps.

[LoneStorgaardDesign]

works for me too 🙂 thanks

[jungerpadawan]

Had the same issue --> AdwCleaner from Malwarebytes works fine!

[davidp53340147]

I have a mac. AdwCleaner is only PC. Most pros like myself use Mac, if anyone has a mac fix I'd me grateful.

[emilymacke]

Did you ever find a solution to this on Mac?  This is driving me absolutely insane.  There isn't a shred of Lavasoft/Webcompanion on my machine (that I can find at least).

EDIT:  I updated my OS and the problem *seems* to have subsided.  Time will tell.

[aminulislam]

This is really helpful. I can fix my problems to uninstall Lavasoft Web Companion.

[davidp53340147]

I have the same issue. I have all current Adobe software, Drivers for my Wacom and two monitors. For me it flickers really bad with the mouse and my Wacom in ALL my Adobe CC 2017 suite, almost to the point of not being able to use the programs. I've tried everything and it never gets any better. This has been a known issue for Adobe for at least the last six years, and I have never seen Adobe make any comments, recommendations or address this in any way. Seems the just don't give a S..T! I'm on a new MAC with 27" iMac, fully loaded. It's becoming a deal breaker and I was an Adobe Beta tester in 95'-98'. They simply have the market, and no longer care if their products work anymore. Very sad. It took seven years of bitching to get Adobe to add the rubber band feature to AI. When I first contacted them, they told me their research said I didn't really need it. I checked the forums and there were Thousands of people requesting it. I guess their idea of research is to ask the programer sitting next to them if it would take more than 10 min to add it, and if it did, they just say screw it. I have loved Adobe sense 94' and that love is beginning to fade. For the first time I'm looking at other software companies. Adobe should actually care or they are ripe for someone to take their market. No one is to big to lose their market share.

[garys80178129]

I tried everything on all the lists, the closest I was able to get was to delete the icudtl.dat file as stated above. But this did not let me create new files and I didn't have access to certain palettes. Customer support entered this in the command line:
netsh winsock reset

and everything worked perfectly -- no hacks. Windows 10 CC 2017. ymmv.

[Om Nath Jha · Accepted solution]

Hi all,

This issue was reported and we found that it is due to an adware called Webcom. Please follow these steps to fix it:

1) Close all Adobe applications and confirm from task manager if all the applications and processes related to Adobe are closed.
2) Click notification area and check if there is any application like webcom, if yes please right click and exit.
3) Open programs and features from control panel and uninstall webcom adware from lavasoft.
4) Relaunch Illustrator and check.

Please feel free to revert if issue still persists.

Regards,

Om

[reedhols]

Thanks Om, it fixed the flickering cursor problem but now it shows CANT error message. Is it anyway that I can fix this too.

Regards

Bahar

[reedhols]

The problem is fixed by uninstall & installing the program.

Thanks anyway

[Dotoki2]

Thank you for the tip!

I uninstalled Lavasoft WebCompanion and now Illustrator works as it should.

[Zoshie]

I scanned my computer (Dell Inspiron 15 7000 series, Windows 10) and there is no Webcom nor Lavasoft program. My illustrator is version 2017.1.0.

Is there any other alternative solution?

I previously managed to solve this issue by downgrading my Windows to Windows 8. However, I can't stop Windows from updating so I hope there's a more permanent solution here.

[rebekahp16360111]

Not sure if you're still having this problem, but I had the same issue. Not sure if you tried this yet but:

For some reason, Lavasoft nor Webcom would show when I went to view it under programs (so I could uninstall it). I looked everywhere, but then I typed "Web Companion" in the Search button (the one on your taskbar if you're still using Windows 10). And it came up as "Web Companion" in the results. I right clicked that and uninstalled it from there. I then restarted my laptop and launched Illustrator, and everything worked fine.

[Natesroom]

This is now happening to me after installing 2019 v23 Update. I have updated with a v23.0.1 Hotfix and that has not solved it. It is happening to about a dozen computers in my office alone. V22 Illustrator 2018 works perfectly in our office.