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Illustrator Freezes When Opening a New or Existing File

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
September 10, 2025
5 replies
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Hello Adobe Illustrator Community,

I’m experiencing an issue with Adobe Illustrator (latest version and previous versions) where the application freezes and becomes unresponsive every time I try to open a new file (blank or existing). It only reaches the "Welcome to Illustrator" screen before stopping.

Details as per community guidelines:

Version of the app: Latest version of Adobe Illustrator (29.8.1) BUT ALSO SAME ISSUE WITH previous versions
Platform and OS version: Windows 11 Pro, 64-bit.
Basic steps to reproduce the problem:

Open Adobe Illustrator.

Attempt to create a new file or open an existing file (via File > New or double-clicking an existing .ai file).

The application freezes at the "Welcome to Illustrator" screen and becomes unresponsive.

Expected result: Illustrator should open the new or existing file and allow me to work. Actual result: Illustrator freezes at the "Welcome to Illustrator" screen and does not respond.

Additional Information:

This issue persists across multiple versions of Illustrator, including the latest and previous ones.

My PC specs:

Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 8600G with Radeon 760M Graphics, 4.35 GHz

RAM: 64 GB

OS: Windows 11 Pro

I have a captured a screenshot

I’ve checked for duplicate posts but couldn’t find this exact issue.

Has anyone else experienced this issue or found a workaround? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Correct answer Matias Maggio

Hi everyone! Thanks for your replies! I tried both suggestions, but they didn’t work. However, I discovered a temporary workaround—disabling my graphics card in the preferences, which I could access and edit without freezing before the issue occurred when opening a blank document, now allows Illustrator to function. It’s not an ideal solution, though, so I’d appreciate help figuring out how to make it work properly with the graphics card enabled

R

rossca41683372

New Participant

After working through the day, somtimes I cannot create a new file. I can open from a Template, but the Ctrl-N function and the menu does not open a new file. I close and restart and then I can create a new file.

Version 29.8.1

Windows 11

A

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @rossca41683372,

I'm sorry to hear you're having similar trouble with Illustrator. Would you mind trying to run Illustrator in Safe Mode (Windows) and under a different administrator account (Windows) and checking if it helps?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

M

Matias MaggioAuthorCorrect answer

New Participant

Hi everyone! Thanks for your replies! I tried both suggestions, but they didn’t work. However, I discovered a temporary workaround—disabling my graphics card in the preferences, which I could access and edit without freezing before the issue occurred when opening a blank document, now allows Illustrator to function. It’s not an ideal solution, though, so I’d appreciate help figuring out how to make it work properly with the graphics card enabled

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @Matias Maggio,

I hope expert's suggestion about setting up a default printer helped resolve the freeze. If the issue still persists, please try renaming the CEP and UXP folders. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe and rename the CEP folder to CEP.old. If that doesn't help, rename the UXP folder to UXP.old from both C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe and C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe.

Let me know how it goes.

Abhishek

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Do you have a default printer set up in the system?

If you do not have a printer, set up a PDF printer.

M

Matias MaggioAuthor

New Participant

Forgot to say: i havent install any plug in or anything like that, all drivers are updated

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