Friday, February 06, 2009

Fireworks CS4 crashes on launch with "Fireworks Unexpectedly Quits" Message


Hello All! I have had Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks 8 for some time now and thought that it might be time for an upgrade since I am using it a lot for class. So I first bought and installed the new Dreamweaver CS4 edition, which is pretty nice. Anyhow, last night I installed (or tried!) to install Fireworks CS4. Everything installed without a problem; however, upon trying to load it, I immediately got a message stating that "Adobe has detected that the application Fireworks has unexpectedly quite". It then proceeded to ask me if I wanted to send a crash report, blah blah. So I started trying to figure it out. Nothing would work. And what is more, I searched Google and found that crashing Fireworks CS4 is a major issue, but everyone who had the problem was stating that it was getting to the splash screen and then crashing, citing some internal error. Turns out this was resolved in most cases by corrupted fonts, or fonts that were installed that Fireworks did not like, though this seemed to be limited to Mac OS.

For the life of me, I could not find anything related to my specific problem. Somewhere along the line I decided to create another new admin user account (I am using Vista SP1 by the way) and see if it would load from there. Lo and behold, it did! So now what? I was thinking a permissions issue, but it could not be I thought. I checked everything and after 4 stinking hours and right before I gave up. I FOUND the solution that worked for me! I wish I remembered the name of the person that I got the workaround from so I could give him or her credit, but unfortunately I have lost the page (I do know it was on an Adobe U2U forum though.Anyhow, this is what worked for me:



Apparently, to solve this issue, one must venture into Dreamweaver where a little unassuming site definition or two is offending Fireworks and it will not start. So:

1.) Open Dreamweaver and click on sites-->Manage Sites
2.) Export and save all your sites and then remove them from the site manager.
3.) Close Dreamweaver and try to relaunch Fireworks.
4.) If Fireworks does not open, then this is not your problem.
5.) However, if it does open, then we can now figure out which sites are causing the problem.
6.) Close Fireworks again.
7.) Open Dreamweaver and go to site manager and import ONE site. Save and close Dreamweaver and try to Open Fireworks.
8.) If Fireworks opens then this was not the offender and can remain in the site manager.
9.) If Fireworks does not open, then you will need to rebuild this site directly in Dreamweaver again.
10.) Keep this cycle up until all sites (that work) have been imported into Dreamweaver. (In my case I had 2 that were causing problems, which makes sense as one was duplicated originally from the other.

I really hope this helps (and that my blog gets listed towards the top of search engines on this topic since it took me forever to find something on it.

Good Luck!

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

amazing solution ... I've been fighting for hours until I got to this page. Thanks to anyone that found this solution!

Anonymous said...

Amazing-thanks, I searched all over including the the Adobe sight and couldn't find anything like this.

Anonymous said...

Direct and to the point...

good job, thanks !

Anonymous said...

Thank you thank you! Installed Fireworks this morning, in a hurry, only to discover the crash issue. Found this solution in about 10 minutes, saved me tons of time.

Laura

Anonymous said...

I've installed CS4 a few times without any problems, but then ran into this issue with Fireworks. Deleting and recreating a site def in Dreamweaver fixed the error. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

phew.... thank god I came across this page. was getting worked up from a week. I dont know how many times I reinstalled stuff. Thanks a million. worked like a charm

Anonymous said...

I'M A NEWBIE ...so please forgive me, but can you clarify step#2 "Export and save all your sites and then remove them from the site manager." I'm not really sure i'm clear on what the site manager is...is that the Manage Sites window in DW? and where should one export them to? desktop??
and will that effect sites that are live and on the web--[really can't mess with my site right now.] ie: can't REBUILD the site as you mentioned on step #10...thanks for the tip and apologies for my weediness...

Tiffany said...

I'm getting the same problem, but it's not being caused by Dreamweaver. Mine started the crash on load when I installed about 2000 fonts yesterday. I think it could be unable to load too many fonts at once?

Anonymous said...

his is da best

Anonymous said...

thanks so much.

you are a life saver

Mike said...

@ the person asking about rebuilding the sites (NEWBIE :) ). Yes, the site manager is in Dreamweaver and just export them anywhere you want (somewhere you can find them easily). Then, in site manager build a new instance of your old site(s). Just use the settings you used before. Then simply copy your old files back to the place you had Dreamweaver create the new site in. Hope that helps.

@ the person asking about fonts. YES - fonts is really (usually) the next biggest reason this is happening. Unfortunately, it is very hard to tell which one is causing the problem. You can find loads of info on how to do try to figure this out. Good luck with that.

Mike

Unknown said...

you rock!!!!

thanks! been going crazy trying to figure this out.

Anonymous said...

What a legend!
Saved me mate...just couldn't figure it out!
Thanks heaps!

Anonymous said...

wow yo uare a life saver THANK YOU!

Anonymous said...

I found out that if u export the sites and clear them all you can start Fireworks, when you import them back if you still have the same problem just go to Manage sites and then to Advanced and !!!! FILL UP EVERYWHERE where it asks for YOUR Site FOLDER!!! I found out i didnt specify it in one place and it was doing ti from there, god know why lol !

Anonymous said...

no way

Anonymous said...

There is another solution: Go to Regedit. Then find HKEY_CURRENT_USER // software // adobe // Fireworks // 10 // recent file list....and then delete all recent files.

Anonymous said...

wow! thanks! finally this blog helped me to fix this. I lost hours untill I got here.

Cynthia said...

Thank you so much! This worked for me, and saved me a ton of time. Thanks again.

digitalmoxie said...

I had the same problem, I shut off extensis suitcase and my fireworks will now magically launch.

Anonymous said...

Did this work for everybody? I have at least 40 sites in Dreamweaver. I'd hate to export them all and then have it not work. I'll definitely report back.

Anonymous said...

Deleted all of my sites from Dreamweaver (43) and Fireworks still didn't work. I really had my doubts. Why would FW care how my DW sites are set up? That's stupid.

I cleaned up my fonts and that did the trick and that makes a lot more sense.

Try the fonts first!!!!

Anonymous said...

Your a star!

Anonymous said...

gregg -

Sorry that didn't work for you but as I beleive I mentioned it seems this issue is related to only one or the other (fonts or sites). And you are right about why does FW care how DW sites are set up - but the reality is that it does!

Mike

Anonymous said...

Genius - WOrked for me! Followed the logic and removed the last site I was working on and Fireworks launched first time.

Now I have to work out what's causing it in that site - only site where I was using Spry controls so that may be a clue.

Anonymous said...

After 2 hours of searching and zero success, one uninstall and reinstall, folder name changes, then this discovery, VOILA! Knew it had nothing to do with the fonts because I never messed with my files (yet) and all was working fine yesterday. Just after start up today and replying to the unexpected error report (shut down was fine, why the report??) and then nothing happened, I was at a loss. Thanks so much.

Anonymous said...

Spent one hour with the 'gurus' in India and was told to un-install and then custom install Fireworks. Same results. Googled this and Voila! Stop in for a homebrew or two.

Why don't the other language and culture gurus know this stuff?

Many thanx.

Anonymous said...

Dude, thanks for sharing this. I was about to work on a new site and had just created a new dreamweaver site definition, then Fireworks stopped working. I knew immediately which site definition to delete as soon as I read this. Thanks again.

Esteban said...

I didnt have any projects on DreamWeaver, however, the REGEDIT solution worked perfect!! Thank you very much!

Anonymous said...

You are a genius. A lifesaver. A prince among men.

wALser said...

it's been said but nice work indeed. perfect solution.

Anonymous said...

MUCHAS GRACIS!!! Estaba desesperado, no encontraba solución, he instalado y desinstalado 10 veces, me estaba volviendo locoy era así de sencillo. MIL GRACIAS

Anonymous said...

thanks - worked 100%

Anonymous said...

This has been doin' my head in for weeks. Thanks so much Fireworks works again.

Anonymous said...

thankyou so much

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