Illustrator keeps crashing when using wacom tablet

[Davi5CAB]

I have a Intuos PS CTL-490. I never had any problem with Illustrator, Photoshop or blender before. But, for some reason, illustrator keeps crashing after some minutes if i use the table to draw on it.

I tried some fixes i saw online such as rolling back to old drivers or illustrator versions, but it just didn't help. When i tried an older Illustrator version, i got a crash message, but, with the newest version, i don't even get an error message.

Is anyone else having the same issue? I saw some people complaining about it too. I assume it has something to do with Illustrator itself, since i don't have any issue with Photoshop or Blender. It's very... well... frustrating, to say the least.

Thx for your time. Cheers!

[Monika Gause]

You could probably contact Customer Care and have them take a look into your system: https://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html

[Bobby Henderson]

Which Wacom tablet driver are you using? If you're on a Windows-based PC and using the 6.4.1-3 driver (dated 1/24/2023) you should uninstall that and then download/install the older 6.4.0-11 driver (dated 11/21/2022). The 6.4.1-3 driver has serious problems. On my own system, using a Wacom Intuos Pro M, the Illustrator application window will just hang and mysteriously disappear, often within a couple or so minutes after launching the application. Strangely, when I run the driver logging utility to record what happens during a crash event the application won't crash. If the logging utility isn't running the crashes happen again. I simply gave up and reverted back to the November 2022 driver.

I'm wonder if any Mac users have experienced similar crashes. Wacom released a newer driver for OSX 10.5-13 on February 28. Along with having a newer driver, Mac users also have the benefit of being able to use a Wacom tablet without the absolute scourge of Windows Ink messing up the works.

Anyway, if you don't know it already the Wacom drivers location is here:
https://www.wacom.com/en-us/support/product-support/drivers
Look for the "Older Versions" link under the "Download" button for the current driver.

[Monika Gause]

First, make sure that you have the latest driver installed for your Wacom tablet. You can download the latest driver from the Wacom website. If you already have the latest driver installed, try reinstalling it to see if that helps.

By @Marry Wright

Please ignore this bot's advice

[Bobby Henderson]

Another thing to try is to disable Windows Ink. To do this, open the Wacom Tablet Properties and go to the Mapping tab. Click on the Use Windows Ink checkbox to turn it off.

set the preferences.

Anyone running Adobe Illustrator or other Adobe applications on a Windows-based PC with a Wacom tablet connected would probably already have Windows Ink disabled regardless if any applications are crashing. Windows Ink is just the absolute worst for how it overrides important pen functions and certain keyboard shortcuts. If Windows Ink is enabled it will ruin any click-drag actions with the pen tip. An animated circle icon thingie pops up in the way, preventing the user to drag any slider icon in the user interface, such as the CMYK sliders in a color palette or a transparency level slider. Click-dragging the pen tip for animated zoom doesn't work either. The dreaded circle icons jumps up again. When clicking into any sort of text entry field a pop-up is liable to jump in the way, wanting you to manually hand-write your text rather than using the physical keyboard on your computer that is a million times faster at text entry. Illustrator and Photoshop (along with most other applications) are utterly not-usable when Windows Ink is enabled in a Wacom tablet's properties. It's pretty much the most utterly stupid graphics related software I've ever seen. I doubt if any of the Microsoft engineers who worked on that garbage have tried using the finished product for any everyday computing tasks. While Wacom continues to rely on Windows Ink for some of the tablet's most basic functions I would have to strongly recommend people only buy a Wacom tablet (or any other graphics tablet) if they're going to connect it to a Mac-based computer. Microsoft has made graphics tablets utterly stink when connected to a PC.

[Brian28603765q0kf]

I'm using a Intuos Large Pro PTH-860 with Illustrator v27.7 and after working with support we verified that the current wacom driver 6.4.2-4 (macOS 10.15 - 13) used with any version of Illustrator past v27.3.1 is what causes a crash whenever a pattern brush is edited and you scroll the dropdown for the "Outer Corner Tile" option.

With Illustrator v27.3.1 it still causes a crash if you scroll the dropdown using the Wacom pen, but if you use a mouse it doesn't. So that's the best workaround I've been able to find so far. Adobe please work with Wacom and get this fixed as soon as possible. 

[Brian28603765q0kf]

Attached a video of the bug happening.

[Monika Gause]

In order to contact the Illustrator developers please use https://illustrator.uservoice.com 

It is not always advisable to use the latest Wacom driver.