Illustrator interface not refreshing consistently.

Question

I am having a variety of interface refresh problems in the latest two release versions of Illustrator. This happens after a minute or so working in any of my Illustrator files. It appears as though screen refreshes become inconsistent. This has been occurring for 3 days now, across repeated restarts and shut downs.

The most obvious of symptoms is in working with layers. I can expand a layer using the Layers Panel and see it's contents. Then I can calapse the layer, but the ">" symbol does not reappear, and I cannot re-open the layer.

Forcing a screen refresh is a remedy. If I close Illustrator and restart it, or just close the layers panel and re-open it, the ">" reappears, but the problem repeats itself on the next calapse of any layer.

There are symptoms in the drawing itself as well, like object handles not showing up until the drawing area of the screen is refreshed forceably. This problem bridges any file I've opened in Illustrator since the problem began.

I am using Illustrator ver 28.4.1 on a new MS Surface Studio 2 w NVidia graphics, running Win 11 with two larger monitors connected via J5 USB4-to-HDMI adapter. I also use CADtools plugin.

All components have been the same for a number of weeks of uneventful work in Illustrator before this. I had been using a slightly older version of Illustrator (I subscribe to Creative Cloud) when this started, and upgraded to 28.4.1 as a first attempt at a solution, but the problem persists.

Maybe unrelated, but worth mentioning: I have run PerfMon during some of this, and noticed peaks in the memory page faults/sec count, upwards of 100k in spikes. I have not watched the same counter on other machines, so cannot conclude anything from just that. The same counter is relatively quiet, though, while I am using other software on my Surface, or even watching video. (see screen shots provided)

Any Ideas? - James -

Matt36180444ou8o · Answer

I have had the exact same issues across the last 2 major versions (2025 and 2024 and may have been in 2023) and also use CadTools (updated to match applicable Ai version). This also spanned two different Windows based workstations. There is no resolution found online that helps. My IT department has not been able to remedy the situation either.

I open Illustrator and everything works fine, then usually a minute or two into working and the refresh stops. You can type text and not see it until a forced refresh, draw a shape and not see it until you force a refresh., select an item and see no values in info palette or CadTracker until you force a refresh. Mostly it slows efficiency to a grind and sometimes just halts it altogether. I restart Illustrator at least 20 times per day and lose probably an hour of work every day as well.

I've changed all the seemingly applicable settings in Illustrator preferences, monitor resolution, refresh rates, GPU performance, etc. I've been using Illustrator since 1995 and have never had something as horrible as this occur.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded