• Adobe After Effects

  AE just disappears when importing a file

  Posted by Phil Lister on March 28, 2009 at 4:19 am

  I’m currently using AE CS3. When I first installed it a few months ago, up to today (03-27-09) it ran fine. Now, everytime I import a file, the program just vanishes…poof, as though I never had it open! I’m right back to my desktop!

  Also, everytime I open the “box” to access files, something called “My Recent Documents” comes up 1st and every drive grinds like it’s chewing up stuff!! Where in the heck did “My Recent Documents” come from? It’s a not a folder I created!

  Granted, my drives are pretty full, but geez!! I did clean 2 of them off somewhat, but the damn “My Recent Documents” still comes up and I think somehow that could a key issue?

  I have two 320 Gig ATA drives internal and a 500 Gig USB 2.0 external. I opened them all up to where there should be more than enough room. Any advice or help would greatly be appreciated!

  UPDATE: Now Photoshop is doing it too! I work on a project, then…poof…it closes out and I’m left with my desktop!
  As far as I can tell, there are no viruses on my system.

  Thanks,
  Phil

  Phil Lister

  Erik Waluska replied 17 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Chris Wright

  March 28, 2009 at 8:23 am

  very first thing I would try is hold down CTRL+ALT+SHIFT as you open AE. That will reset AE’s preferences to default. That fixes a lot of stuff.

  Then I’d check what’s running in the background. Too many hard drive read ‘n writes the same time adobe stuff tries to open. then virus/malware check with AVG or Trend Micro.

  They find 99.999% of stuff. heck AVG has a free version you can download and trend has a free online check called housecall too.

  I’d recommend getting these fixed before April 1st, because you might have a sleeper trojan that will turn on on that date.
• 

  Phil Lister

  March 28, 2009 at 4:55 pm

  Thanks for the info Chris! As far as I can tell, no viruses of any kind, but I’ll have the shop check that. Should I just unplug my external while using AE then?

  Thanks,
  Phil

  Phil Lister
• 

  Erik Waluska

  March 29, 2009 at 5:13 pm

  I assume you are on a PC so you can try to use system restore to reset the software configuration to a previous state when everything was running correctly.

  To use system restore go to Start>Help and Support>Undo changes to your computer with System Restore. Then choose “Restore my computer to an earlier time”, click next and pick a date when you know things were still working OK. You can only select dates that are in bold type because those are the only ones that have a restore point set.

  Have you installed any new software, plug-ins or fonts around the time that things started going haywire?

  I had a problem recently with a bad font causing AE to do the disappearing act every time I tried to save the project. I had to remove the font and delete all of the project files that were created using that font and rebuild the project from zero to get rid of the issue.

  If all else fails try to uninstall and reinstall the Adobe suite.

  Hope that helps.

  -E

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up