[BUG] - PhotoDemon is not starting

[dataneim]

the version 2024.7 and version 9 is not starting in windows 11 PC 64 bit, 64Gb RAM. When double clicking on exe file, it shows the opening logo and then disappears in 3 seconds. In the task manager, it leaves exiftool.exe(32) in the memory. If you start the program 3 times and disappear 3 times, in the task manager I can see 3 lines of exiftool.exe(32).

The troubleshoot document says that unzipping from legacy zip program might cause the issue, in my case I used few different zip programs. Also, I made sure that App\PhotoDemon\Plugins folder is healthy.

I downloaded version 8, this is okay. But as mentioned above, ver 9 and 2024.7 is having this weird problem.

[tannerhelland]

Hello @dataneim . I apologize that it's taken me a few days to reply.

Thank you for trying a few different zip programs (that would have been my first guess). This is the first time I've heard of this issue on the 2024.7 build, so I don't have an immediate solution to suggest!

Sometimes aggressive antivirus software can lock down one or more of the third-party libraries that ship with PhotoDemon. This might explain the logo appearing and then disappearing before the program actually starts. A quick check of VirusTotal shows that one AV provider mis-flags something in PhotoDemon's zip file, which is always frustrating:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/8b2ee00a926beed6a9e2598c84c0f43afdcff0428ef76ce13c04087272c885f7

Can I ask you to try the latest PhotoDemon nightly build and tell me if that works for you? Here's a direct link:

https://github.com/tannerhelland/PhotoDemon/releases/download/PhotoDemon-nightly/PhotoDemon-nightly.zip

If the nightly build also doesn't load, it might still have enough time to generate one or more debug logs in the /Data/Debug subfolder. If it does produce any files there, can you attach those files here so I can take a closer look? I'd love to get this solved for you.

Thank you!