Illustrator Crashing After Startup (All Available CC Versions)

[AlexM1990]

Hi, I've been experiencing an issue with Illustrator CC over the last few days, where the program crashes after loading the window. I won't be able to interact with anything, and trying to click on anything makes the program become unresponsive; Windows will notify me to close it.

I've tried a few things over the last few days.

-  Tried older versions. This allowed me to get into the preferences to clear my files, but once I tried to open a file or create a new document, I would get the same crash.

- Used the Creative Cloud cleaner tool. This had no effect.

- Uninstalled Creative Cloud and all Adobe Applications.

- Deleted most of the files in my %temp% folder that had Adobe in the title.

My next thing to try is a fresh Windows install, but before I do that, any recommendations for things to try, or has anyone had a similar issue in the past?

Windows 11, 11th Gen i7-11800H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3050 Laptop GPU

Thanks

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @AlexM1990,

Thanks for sharing the steps you've already tried.

Could you confirm the exact version of Illustrator you’re currently using? In the meantime, I'd recommend testing Illustrator in Safe Mode and also under a new admin user account to rule out any system-level or user-level conflicts that might be causing the crash. You can use these official Microsoft guides to set that up:

Start Windows in Safe Mode

Create and manage user accounts in Windows

If Illustrator still crashes in both environments, could you please share a screen recording that shows exactly what happens? It would really help to see what you're seeing on your end.

Also, do you remember if this issue started after a recent update or system change?

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

[Bobby Henderson]

Make sure the driver for your NVidia graphics card is up to date. The current Studio driver is version 576.52, released 5/19/25.

Do you have any peripherals attached, such as a Wacom tablet? If so, make sure the drivers for those devices are updated. One particular Wacom driver from a couple years ago would cause Illustrator to crash immediately after launching.

Are other applications running in the background? 16GB of system RAM is not much at all to divide between Illustrator, the operating system and anything else running in the background.

[AlexM1990]

Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to reply. I'm not sure what's changed, but Illustrator has magically come back to life. I have a feeling it was trying to load the new features window, but it was crashing every time. But doesn't explain why it would be doing it in the older versions. I'm honestly not sure, but it seems to be working again.