Hallo leesyloo_au'

I don't use Craft Artist, but like other Serif programs you can do a "reset" by holding Ctrl as you open it. That often corrects faults. Have you tried that?

Welcome, Alisa! Thanks for joining us here.

Your splash screen does indeed look strange, but I’ve used High-Logic MainType for many years and I’ve never seen a problem like this, so I’m inclined to agree with your suggestion that it’s probably a coincidence.

Reinstalling the operating system seems like a very drastic step! When you tried the Ctrl-runup you should have been rewarded with a dialog asking you to confirm that you want to reset your user settings. Did you see that? And if so, did it include an ‘Also delete local settings files’ checkbox? I have to confess to clutching at straws here, because I would expect Revo Uninstaller to have zapped the local settings files along with everything else related to your CraftArtist installation.

Well I have been on quite a journey since I last visited. I first tried things like Process monitor and Windows debug (after doing a lot of googling) to try to pinpoint what may have been causing the problem but I couldn't work it out. So yesterday was spent reinstalling Windows 11 - it took so very long because I kept hitting speed bumps with bitlocker locking up my drives - and then having to google and ready many, many pages to get the right cmd codes to unlock it because a lot of the advice was old and Microsoft changes things but anyway it got done.

After putting on the bare minimum of progs that needed putting on I tried CA and crossed my fingers - got excited when I saw the old familiar splash screen - and then it's been back to ????? since. The program opens but the splash screen still hangs with "Loading Craft Artist". It used to always open with the Daisy Trail info etc which I just closed. I left it a while to see if it would fully open bit it doesn't. So I check Task Manager and it's "running" there - the CPU and memory use is constantly rising - falls a little and then rises more.

I uninstalled and reinstalled again today - giving Windows more time to do all it's updatery. Started CA - still the same. Then while CA was trying to load I noticed something else - I couldn't load any browser pages etc (This site can't be reached). Shut it down in Task Manager - refreshed browser pages and they're back. So I rebooted modem and restarted PC - tried again - same result.

I should mention that in the meantime I did try the hold down CTRL while starting thing - just to see if that did anything - got nothing to lose because I have no settings saved - everything had been wiped clean. Didn't help. So I thought bugger this I'm going to open CA up on my laptop - where I installed it recently - and it was opening up fine. Would you believe the same thing is happening? Right down to the "This site can't be reached" and my laptop informing me that I am currently offline (even though my wifi icon is on saying I have internet access). CA is cutting me off somehow while trying to "load".

I know - nobody can probably help - it's weird. I just needed a vent haha. But if anyone has any ideas?? I need a break - It's lunch time for me here in Australia so I'm off to have something. Thanks for listening

OMG!!!!!!!!!! Ralph!!! thank you so much!!! That worked!!! I just did the reg file option. I tested it on my laptop first and CA opened.

I had actually been thinking of what could be wrong and had literally been thinking of trying to open it with no internet - not thinking anything about the DT site - but I was thinking it was something to do with it trying to access my files from One Drive. I just hadn't gotten around to trying it yet because I had been busy today and to be honest had enough of thinking about it - the whole drama has been stressful - reinstalling and trying to put everything back on - which was probably a good thing in the end - clean up some stuff and not put back some progs I haven't used in ages. And others can wait until I really need them.

Once again - thank you Ralph and for Alfred for this forum - I hope this might help anyone else who may have this problem - because if anyone else is still using Craft Artist - it is going to be happening to them too!!

Yes the fonts look a bit weird - the ones I used haven't been installed back on yet so they've been subbed with system fonts 

By the Way, should have added re. point 4) above. With the Internet disconnected I changed the clock back to 'today' and Craft Artist still worked, so it's possibly related to the internet connection!!
And I didn't discover that the versions were different until after my testing, so that may have an effect too.

Julian

Oh Julian I feel for you and your wife with the troubles - it is frustrating isn't it? Hopefully the link Ralph gave with help you too - it's a very simple fix and got everything up and running again for me so hopefully will for your wife again too

Thank you Ralph. This link proved very useful, and seeing these posts most timely. I used CA2 about a week ago, and then came to open it yesterday to sort and add prices to some photos of crafting supplies I want to move on, prior to moving house ourselves.

Sure enough, it just hung there, doing not a lot, but once I applied this fix, all was well again. Yay!

Yes, I can confirm I get a similar thing happen if I click on 'Add items from Digikit', followed by closure of CA2 if I click the yes option.

But when I click the no option, it does seem to let me carry on, adding digikit item(s) and dragging them on to my page. I left it running awhile and ended up closing it down myself.

However, I just re-opened CA2, hit the yes option (twice) and it did let me add the digikit items.  But, when I dragged them on to the page, and then tried to move them around nothing happens other than getting a green circle with a diagonal line through it, whether on the page or on the side.

Not good!

OK after having lunch and a bit of a think I thought I would test out the first option given in the link Ralph gave ^^. I tried it on my laptop first.

Option A

Disable your Internet connection ......... Start CraftArtist 2 and once the program has started right click the WiFi or Ethernet connection again and select Enable to reconnect to the Internet.

I actually left the internet off for about 5 minutes while I opened CA and this time the offending "square" had the Daisy Trail info back in it.

No script error pop ups - so that was good. I was able to open up a file with no probs and go to the digikit browser - no script errors - because I wasn't online so the "square" wasn't trying to link to Affinity. I turned the wifi back on and let the program sit for a while to see if it would shut down but it didn't.

So I did the same on my desktop. It was all good until I turned the wifi back on and tried to go to the digikits - of course then the "square" stopped showing Daisytrail pic and the script errors started again - trying to link to Affinity. But the only different thing is that after hitting No (to wanting to run scripts) twice to get rid of the errors. I have left the program open - to see if it would start the shutdown/auto startup loop - but it hasn't and it's been around 10 minutes so far.

It's an annoying workaround and hopefully we might get another reg file fix.

Thank you Ralph. This looks very promising.
That logo with txt at the bottom looks somewhat garbled. Is it important?

O dear. Like others I used option a and it worked ....joy unconfined....but when I looked through the digikits, the screen froze. ...despair ditto. No message.

Would using Option B correct this? Am nervous about messing about with the directory so havent tried that yet.

I get nothing useable when I click on the text box download indicated in your reply. Is it not straightforward?

New to this. How would I find Darren Wright.

Thank you for your time, Alfred.