Flippin' Illustrator keeps shutting down. Not crashing, just disappearing.

[Pat Whatley]

I HATE CLOUD BASED SOFTWARE. We are running Illustrator as a part of the entire Adobe Creative Suite. Works great most of the time, the problem is that if I go help a customer I get back to my desk and Illustrator has shut down. I restart and most of the time everything I had open will recover but sometimes it won't and sometimes files that I had open and had saved, will be completely erased from the computer when I restart Illustrator. Now it's developed this lovely habit where it just disappears while working in it. Just now I was typing in a list of sponsors...then I'm looking at my desktop icons. Illustrator didn't freeze, it didn't pop up an error message, it didn't ask to send a crash report, it was just gone like it had never been opened. Reopen it again and the entire page of sponsors is gone. I've deleted the software and reloaded it countless times. We have plenty of memory, plenty of processor speed. What really ticks me off is that the guys around the corner are running hacked unlicensed versions and they are as stable as they can get. Are we really shelling out a fortune to be legit for an inferior product? Is anyone else having this problem.

 

[Graphic Extremes]

Is there a program on the computer that is shutting the program down. Energy saver program. I know Windows is starting to shut down processes in order to save energy, not sure if MAC has started this also.. You could check power settings.

I use creative cloud and do not have this problem, I walk away from computer and leave program open for hours on end.

 

[GAC05]

Pat, what kind of equipment are you running it on? I have an old Win7 pc and a newer Win10 laptop. Lots of problems with the older system (I couldn't update it past CS2020). The newer one - not so bad. I've noticed that Adobe opens up almost as many processes as Chrome, even without an open file. Maybe something in there is not playing nice with all the other stuff running. This is on Windows - if you are running a Mac it should be flawless.......

 

[weyandsign]

You need to look at event viewer. Click on the start button and type event viewer. Look in Windows Logs -> System. Look for a red error when the problem happened. Let us know what it says exactly. A disappearing program means it's crashing most likely.

 

[Signstein]

27.1.1 and 27.2 Illustrator crashes and disappear using Wacom tablet

For the last week and a half after updating to 27.1.1Illustrator just randomly shuts down. No crash report no nothing. There is no rhyme or reason. I can't recreate it. Totally random. With new files. With old files. Doesn't matter at all. Have dome all the recommended troubleshooting. Even went...

community.adobe.com

Here's a similar sounding complaint that was traced back to a Wacom driver -

 

[Eforcer]

I HATE CLOUD BASED SOFTWARE. We are running Illustrator as a part of the entire Adobe Creative Suite. Works great most of the time, the problem is that if I go help a customer I get back to my desk and Illustrator has shut down. I restart and most of the time everything I had open will recover but sometimes it won't and sometimes files that I had open and had saved, will be completely erased from the computer when I restart Illustrator. Now it's developed this lovely habit where it just disappears while working in it. Just now I was typing in a list of sponsors...then I'm looking at my desktop icons. Illustrator didn't freeze, it didn't pop up an error message, it didn't ask to send a crash report, it was just gone like it had never been opened. Reopen it again and the entire page of sponsors is gone. I've deleted the software and reloaded it countless times. We have plenty of memory, plenty of processor speed. What really ticks me off is that the guys around the corner are running hacked unlicensed versions and they are as stable as they can get. Are we really shelling out a fortune to be legit for an inferior product? Is anyone else having this problem.

We have been having weird issues with our suite also. We run it on two seats. They either freeze or lag and require a reboot. Now I know it is not us. Checking with my peers.

 

[Goatshaver]

I have a similar issue with Illustrator and it does crash but it's when I have Photoshop open at the same time and happens when I'm not using either program, they just need to be open and something eventually triggers a crash. Haven't figured it out yet.

 

[Bobby H]

A year ago Wacom's tablet driver was really bad about making Illustrator disappear soon after launch. I had to roll back to an older Fall 2022 driver to get the crashes to stop. It took Wacom until around May of 2023 to release a Windows driver that wouldn't crash Illustrator.

Graphics card drivers can be another culprit. I'm not liking the current NVidia Studio driver very much. Illustrator's animated zoom in outline view previously worked smooth the 120Hz UHD resolution display of my Alienware notebook. Now it flashes black and white when click-dragging the zoom in and out. It kind of sucks that animated zoom in outline view only works on displays with 2000 pixel wide or greater resolution displays (I use a couple of 1080p monitors on my work setup).

BTW, despite the "Creative Cloud" name, Adobe Illustrator still works as a desktop app. The installers and updates may be downloaded from "the cloud," but the application is installed locally.

 

[netsol]

disappearing is crashing.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Could always run Adobe from the CLI and see what it outputs when it exits (or run some type of logging program).

While I have had many issues on Windows with the Wacom driver (ironically none with the Linux version, which I was amazed), none of which had kept Adobe programs from running, but it's been a long time since I have been on Windows, so that may not be the case anymore.

As to the "cloud" aspect. As was already mentioned, the programs themselves aren't cloud (do have some cloud aspects, but not the apps themselves), they are more subscription programs. There is an argument to be made for DRM interfering with UX. So there is that.

 

[unclebun]

The DRM is what he's referring to by cloud. The app has to constantly check with home or things don't work.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

The DRM is what he's referring to by cloud. The app has to constantly check with home or things don't work.

This is going to depend, in my mind, if these are show stopping things or just annoying things. For instance, the fonts (although I do think there was a work around in the earlier versions of CC, but I don't know if that has changed), the Adobe fonts would require perpetual internet connection, however, you can still disconnect and use what local fonts you have. It doesn't mean that type doesn't work in the program. I'm not a fan of that service, so I wouldn't use it anyway, but I know people that like it. If that work around still exists and is doable, that would be a big hurdle that I am aware of for that always needing an internet connection. You would still need to connect every 30 or 90 days (depending on the plan) for validation. There may be others that I'm not aware of, certainly as time as gone on, but that was just the biggie one that I am aware of.

I wouldn't call it cloud based though, it would need something like a browser interface (which I do think there is a smaller stripped down Ps version that Adobe has out that runs in the browser, I think there was a demo of Maya on the browser as well). I think those times are coming and I think that's what the commercial realm wants. While I have used browser based UIs for some programs that I have written (when immediate mode was too unwieldy for me), the programs were still local, the server/socket calls were still local. The entire program could be run on a computer that was offline, it just happened to use the browser for the UI and that was it. Those weren't cloud based.

I do think, my opinion, that Adobe has muddied the perception waters a bit with calling their collection "Adobe Cloud".

 

[The Vector Doctor]

i use Adobe CC 10-12 hours per day with very rare shutdowns. I did have an issue with a constant crash and narrowed it down to a corrupt preference file. You can remove that file and restart. In doing so you will lose a lot of settings. If you dont' want to redo all of your preferences you can see if you have a backup of an older preference file and overwrite the current problematic one

 

[jharler]

My first year of higher education taught me a valuable lesson. In the computer lab, near the end of the hour-long class we spent working on a document, someone kicked a power strip and killed power to all the computers. Most of us lost all of our work. Lesson learned. Save early and save often.

I've had Illustrator mysteriously close on me too, but it doesn't happen often, maybe once every two weeks or so. Considering I open Illustrator and don't close it, nor do I reboot my computer often, this isn't bad. Typically any unsaved work is recovered.

 

[Bobby H]

Some performance issues with Illustrator can be solved by resetting the AI Preferences file when launching Illustrator. Use these keyboard shortcuts when launching the application, Windows: press and hold Ctrl+Alt-Shift; OSX: press and hold Option+Command+Shift. Doing this will reset the workspace, so any custom settings will have to be re-built (unless the user thought ahead and saved a copy of the workspace).

Logging out of the Creative Cloud account, rebooting and then logging in again can also solve some problems, such as missing fonts synced from the Adobe Fonts service.

If all else fails it's pretty easy to roll back to a prior build of Illustrator and/or use the newer public beta build. If a Wacom tablet driver is causing problems it's easy to roll back to an earlier version (they have previous driver releases at their web site).

 

[netsol]

This is going to depend, in my mind, if these are show stopping things or just annoying things. For instance, the fonts (although I do think there was a work around in the earlier versions of CC, but I don't know if that has changed), the Adobe fonts would require perpetual internet connection, however, you can still disconnect and use what local fonts you have. It doesn't mean that type doesn't work in the program. I'm not a fan of that service, so I wouldn't use it anyway, but I know people that like it. If that work around still exists and is doable, that would be a big hurdle that I am aware of for that always needing an internet connection. You would still need to connect every 30 or 90 days (depending on the plan) for validation. There may be others that I'm not aware of, certainly as time as gone on, but that was just the biggie one that I am aware of.

I wouldn't call it cloud based though, it would need something like a browser interface (which I do think there is a smaller stripped down Ps version that Adobe has out that runs in the browser, I think there was a demo of Maya on the browser as well). I think those times are coming and I think that's what the commercial realm wants. While I have used browser based UIs for some programs that I have written (when immediate mode was too unwieldy for me), the programs were still local, the server/socket calls were still local. The entire program could be run on a computer that was offline, it just happened to use the browser for the UI and that was it. Those weren't cloud based.

I do think, my opinion, that Adobe has muddied the perception waters a bit with calling their collection "Adobe Cloud".

i guess this is the same way i will get an error sending a client's file from flexi BUT the same file prints without checking for licenses in production manager?

you used to be able to put a phony entry in hosts file for adobe at one time OR SO I HAVE HEARD

 

[gnubler]

I HATE CLOUD BASED SOFTWARE.

Ditto that. After the last automatic update, double clicking on a .ai file would open either version 2023 or 2024. It was happening with PS and InDesign too.
For the love of freakin' god MAKE. IT. STOP. It finally corrected itself, presumably after another update.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

...you used to be able to put a phony entry in hosts file...

I don't think Windows allows (or maybe that's going to be the case with an update with 11 or "12" when it comes out) for editing the host file anymore (or it's going to be in the feature) or even do registry edits. I really wouldn't like that with the hosts file, that could act as a poor man's dns sinkhole. Just glad that I don't have to worry about that anymore though.

 

[netsol]

After re-reading your post, I am also leaning towards over aggressive power management.
edit power plan, set everything to never ((windows update like to change it to 3 minutes for sleep, hibernate and shutdown.)
then, go to device manager and uncheck allow computer to shut down this connection to save power in network deter/properties/power mangement
you cant expect adobe to save your session if your computer terminates it.

you should also spend a few minutes figuring out how to AUTOSAVE ever 10 minutes WITH A LOCAL SAVE LOCATION (if it will allow you. Adobe hs gone bat s**t crazy with steps of undo, but, you need to do a REAL OLD FASHIONED SAVE AS, so when you walk back, the worse you find is 10 minutes of work lost