After Effects freezes at startup?

I got this problem occasionally on different machines running Vista when firing up After Effects CS3. When it said “Initializing User Interface” it froze. Sometimes it would start after 15 minutes but, seriously, that’s not how I like to work, although I use any delay to excuse a round trip to my espresso machine. I didn’t find anything about it on the beloved internet so I had to figure it out myself. And here’s what you can do:

  1. Locate your User directory of After Effects:
    • C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\8.0
  2. Now delete your preferences and workspaces. I don’t know what files exactly you have to delete, but be aware that your saved templates, workspaces and other user files will be reset. I know this hurts, but you want AE running again, don’t ya?
    • Adobe After Effects 8.0 Prefs.txt
    • Adobe After Effects 8.0 Shortcuts.txt
    • AfterFX8.ini
    • Workspaces.xml

That’s it. On the next start-up After Effects will create these files again with default settings. Good Luck!

Apr 26, 2009
20:33

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Comments

kerschy (Apr 27, 2009)

back to after effects huh?

Phil Strahl (Apr 27, 2009)

lol! omg — sweet jesus – *NO*! i just have to use it occasionally to check the (roto-)work of my fellow vfx artists who all work in after effects on our current project. plus since i am giving tutorials on after effects i have to use it from time to time to try things out. and that fat bugger really does give me a terrible time…! >.<