Premiere Pro 2020 won't launch

[donaldb62894623]

Premiere Pro 2020 is installed on my Dell laptop (Windows 10).  Recently, it has nearly stopped launching.  I say "nearly" because maybe 1/30 times it will launch -- it's completely unpredictable. 

When I launch I always make sure that a.) I am logged into CC and b) no other applications are running. 

I have tried different ways to launch Premiere:

1. double click the .exe file in the directory
2. clicking the icon in the start menu (see attached file)
3. by opening a .prproj file
4. by selecting a video file and "open with"

None of these has worked.  Is this operator error?  Is anyone experiencing this problem and/or know how to fix it?

[PWE-M-NC]

I do not have any plug-ins and everything has been operating fine until last week when the Windows 10 update referenced in my previous post loaded. After writing my post I tried to uninstall PR and the error screen stated PR was still running. Under the Task Mgr Processes tab there was no PR icon. I clicked the Details tab in the Task Manage and saw PR was stopped. I right clicked the PR icon and ended the task. I completed the uninstall and reinstalled PR. Click on the PR icon in the program list and it failed. I then tried to open it as Admin. Again failed. I went back to the Task Mgr. Processes tab no PR, Details tab PR stopped. Ended the task in Details. Opened the program as Admin and SUCCESS!!!!! Weird. 2019 works fine and have been using the same system for over year.  

[PWE-M-NC]

I also discovered that this could happen with PS and AE. When PS would not open I found four Photoshop.exe files open under the Details tab. Once I ended them PS opened. HUH!

[harris1966]

I agree with many other forum users. Our company spends thousands of dollars every year for Adobe subscriptions. Almost every time we update these programs, they crash or have other problems. I have uninstalled/installed Premiere Pro half a dozen times today until I finally found a version that will open and won't crash. 14.0

The Premiere Pro 2020 starts to launch, and freezes at the start screen. Every single time. The same thing happened with Audition. We just uninstall/install until we finally land on a version that works.

Why aren't these software updates vetted more? I have a Dell laptop running Windows 10 Pro, version 2004 Build 19041.527. I simply do not have the time or bandwidth to spend as much money with you as we do and have to spend half a day trying to get your software to work.

What is Adobe doing about its signficant bug problem long term?

[carrickmg]

I'm having the same problem on a brand new macbook pro running the latest version of premiere. It launches half the time, but the other half of the time it gets stuck with the rainbow wheel when I try to open a project. One workaround that seems to work is I open a new project, then close it, then open my project. But that's super annoying to have to do every time. Please solve this bug once and for all.

[creativeadvantech]

I have dual monitors setup.  Hopefully this is the fix:

- Go to Task Manager, make sure all Adobe Premiere are closed,

- Locate the Premiere .exe file in your C drive.

- Run as Administrator

- Go to Properties (right click) on the .exe file.

- Under Compatibility

- Check "Disable fullscreen optimization

- Quit

- Relaunch Premiere the usual way (by clicking the pproj file...etc.)

[Michael Grenadier]

thanks for posting this.  It seems like there are some problems associated with multimonitor setups.  Hopefully adobe is getting a handle on this.

[Craig R.]

Thank you!

[mfergus]

That didn't work for me, but I'll see if I can launch it witout a second monitor.

[mfergus]

Yep - with the monitor disconnected it starts every time. Plugging the monitor in after launching works fine. Incredibly annoying, but at least I can edit now. Thanks, all!

[marya31391609]

Unbelievable. I've been battling this for days, trying to revert to previous versions and try again, clear media files and try again...and I just tried your solution of unplugging my 2nd monitor...and it launched fine this time. This makes me so mad. I've lost so much time over the last 2 days waiting on uninstall/reinstallations, and the Adobe support person I chatted with didn't ask me anything about dual monitors. He just said that I needed to revert to the last version and I'd be fine. Get your shizzle together Adobe!!

And is there a way to promote this solution? It's 4 pages deep, and it sure would save a lot of people a lot of time if they can just try unplugging their 2nd monitors until the app launches!

[displaced7]

Didn't work for me 😕

[Michael Grenadier]

displaced7, this is a long thread with many people jumping in.  Please tell us your system specs: OS version, Premiere version, amount of RAM, Hardware specs including graphics card.

[PWE-M-NC]

This may be a coincidence but the Windows 10 updated 2020-11 KB4586781 may have solved the problem. I also rolled back to PP 14.3.2 Build 42 and this combination is working fine. Little gun shy about updating to the latetest version of anything. My attaged is, it it works don't update. 🙂 

[PWE-M-NC]

The moral of the story. If it is working, don't update. Running 14.3.2 and it works great.

[Michael Grenadier]

well, yea but if you follow the posts in this forum you realize that nobody's listening to this advice.  I understand the lure of the new features but you need to take precautions before you update.  Perhaps adobe should issue a warning before allowing you to download an update (don't think that's gonna happen) I work on both windows and mac machines.  On the mac, it's pretty simple to clone your startup drive using carbon copy cloner https://bombich.com/ so that if things go south, you can restore your startup drive to it's previous state.  It's not free, but I think there's a free trial and it's a good idea to do this before updating your OS or any piece of software you're dependant on.  On windows, I'd been told that creating a bootable clone was not possible, but that there was a way to roll back an update.  When I searched for instructions that worked, they didn't...  but I did find this recently and will figure out which option before doing any serious updating...   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZBDluCITmE

That said, cloning and updating your clone on a regular basis is a good idea for many reasons.  The main one is that your startup drive will eventually fail.   All drives (including ssd's) will fail, it's not a question of if, but when...  Hopefully this will not happen for years... but it could happen tomorrow.  Replacing the drive and restoring it from a clone will be much faster than reinstalling all your apps...  and your startup drive or one of your apps can get corrupted...  or you can accidentally delete an important file...

rant over.  happy new year everyone.

[tannerb12887184]

Still having this problem in 2021, but it looks like I'm not the only one so I thought I'd share my work around. After attempting to launch Premier via taskbar shortcut, CC app, and by opening a project file, allto no avail, I checked the task manager. Although it showed no active tasks running, I kept scrolling and found three instances of Premier running in the background, burried in the task manager with all the other background processes and system opperations and etc. Ended all three instances, retried the taskbar shortcut, and it opened with no issues.

As to why Premier is opening in the background, I got no clue. Regardless, this seems to work for now. So if you're still experienceing this issue, I'd check your task manager and do some digging. Hope this helps!

[defaultk2q8rse8acbv]

I also discovered that Adobe Pr was continuing to run as a background process after I had closed it.  The only way I could re-open the program without rebooting my computer, was to end it using task manager. Only then could I launch it.  

[default367kd6t41tup]

Uninstall premiere and then install an older version....then open it...close it...and do the update...

[default1rkvkpy2ti9q]

Shout out to Adobe 2022 for still having this issue

[jorr@ejward.com]

2023 and it's still here.