Illustrator crashes after most most recent Windows 10 update
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Last night my computer updated Windows 10 to version 1903 (build 18362.356).
I had Illustrator 2017 installed. I was able to start the program, but was unable to either open previous .ai files, nor open existing .pdf files, nor create new files. Any time I tried to do either of the three, Illustrator crashed before a file was opened or created.
I tired multiple times to get it to work. I tried updating it to Illustrator 2019. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it. I tried uninstalling/reinstalling without preserving user settings/preferences. I tried rebooting, uninstalling, rebooting, installing, and rebooting again. All the same.
I came across this thread: https://community.adobe.com/t5/Illustrator/Illustrator-2019-crashing-on-Windows-10/m-p/10650520#M146...
I changed my default printer to "Microsoft Print to PDF" and making sure that the checkbox for "Let Windows manage my default printer" was not selected. I still continued to have the same problem.
I also saw this thread: https://community.adobe.com/t5/Illustrator/Illustrator-2019-hangs-up-and-then-crashes-on-Windows-10/...
I tried renaming Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Illustrator 23 Settings folders to Adobe Illustrator.old and Adobe Illustrator 23 Settings.old in C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Adobe. This did not help either.
I did not try rebooting in safe mode yet.
I'm having other issues with Adobe software. Adobe Acrobat has been extremely laggy on an intermitent basis all day and took a very long time to start up when I tried to open a basic text-focused .pdf. Meanwhile Photoshop hangs on the splash screen for several minutes and then crashes.
I need Illustrator above anything else at the moment. If no viable solutions are proposed before EOD tomorrow, I will try a full system reset.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
EDIT: Turining off hardware acceleration/"GPU Performance" under Edit>Preferences>Performance before creating a new file or opening an existing file resolved my issue.
This is obvious a temporary fix, but it works for now.
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Better choose as default Printer: Adobe PDf you have installed with Acrobat.
You need th find the program module or cause of those crashes.
In Windows 10 you have a tool Event Viewer that can do that.
 Please try it and copy in a message the detailed text that appears. Thank you.
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Thanks for your advice, Federico. I tried setting the printer to Adobe PDF, as you suggested. This did not help.
Here is my computer's event log for the past 7 hours.
Illustrator most recently crashed (in the same way as described in my original post) at around 11:15 AM. These crashes appear to not register with event logger.
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Well, you have to Click on the first top tab: Level to order and see those events labeled as Errors! with a red circle icon. Please check Microsoft information about it if needed, and access to detailed information about each event.
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See below:
Upon clicking on one that says "application error", I get this:
And these are the details:
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It would appear that you're right. Interestingly, I can't access AMD Radeon settings anymore... I will try turning off hardware acceleration in Ai to see if that makes a difference before sorting out driver issues with my graphics card.
EDIT: Turining off hardware acceleration/"GPU Performance" under Edit>Preferences>Performance before creating a new file or opening an existing file resolved my issue.
This is obvious a temporary fix, but it works for now.
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I recently had a similar issue, but it wasn't with the Windows 10 update to 1903. I could open Illustrator, but it crashed when I tried to open a file. I could open files in safe mode, but not in a clean boot. I tried every trick in all the threads I could find.
It seems the problem was actually a recent cumulative Security Update from Microsoft (KB4524149). I'm not savvy enough to know why it conflicts with Illustrator, but once I uninstalled this update Illustrator works fine again.
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