Illustrator CS5 will not start - solved -

[georgesp86969407]

Hi I use an older CS5 (yes, I know, but I am an occasionnal user only so...) recently, Illustrator will not start. It will display the opening frame, initialize, start to load fonts. then freeze.
- I tried to delete the first fonts in my directory in case it was a corrupted font problem
- I used the app to desinstall  the suite then made a fresh install from my official cs5 download.
- photoshop and indesign still work without any problem.
Win 10 family v1909 with all updates. expl. syst. 18363.952
running on a lenovo Y720T intel 3.60 and 16 ram
All help will be arrpeciated. thanks.

[Monika Gause]

No problem with CS5, but Windows 10 is just not compatible with it.

[georgesp86969407]

Thanks Monika but it worked fine until last week and the rest of the suite still does so I would hope this is not the origin of the problem, although cs5 was indeed launched before win 10 and thus only lists XP as compatible system.

[Monika Gause]

The rest of the suite does not matter. Different code.

Since it ran until last week, a guess: Windows update.

Every Windows update might fix something or break something and pretty much all you can do is wait for the next update to fix what it broke.

[georgesp86969407 · Accepted solution]

- SOLVED -
I located the illustrator preference file at *system disk*:\Users\*yourname*\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS5 Settings
zip it and rename it so that illustrator does not find it, but that I could restore it if needed.
Started illustrator without further issue.

[Bill Silbert]

I'm glad that trashing preferences helped in this case. I'd just like to follow up on what Monika said. Windows 10 makes fairly frequent automatic updates which affects almost all users—most of whom are totally unaware that an update has been run. These updates have shown to be notorious for rendering older unsupported versions of Illustrator (and other third party software) at the least functioning poorly and at the worst completely unusable. The severity of the updates' path of destruction to old software can vary from machine to machine. Usually trashing preferences, as you were able to do, does not fix the problem. Further, Microsoft has announced that from here forward Windows will always be refrred to as Windows 10 even though eventual versions may be completely different than the original Windows 10. If you want to keep running CS5 successfully then you may want to buy a used older PC (with a pre Windows 10 version of Windows) from ebay and install it on that.

[georgesp86969407]

thanks, I see your point as a technician, and I don't want to enter a useless debate, but if trashing the pref in 5 sec allows me to keep on working on a powerfull modern machine for now, as a end user, it pretty solved the problem for me. I tagged the post as solved if it can help any other user experiencing the same problem, untill, enventually, cs5 will no longer be supported. The real pro solution then will be to use a more modern software rather than an obsolete program. In the meantime, it allows me to finish my ongoing jobs right now rather than beging the quest for an older pc or just wait for something to happen in the next update (or not). Cheers !