Expert: Nick Putthoff - 2/25/2008

Question
Illustrator CS2 fails to launch, i get a message saying

The application illustrator has unexpecting quit. the system and other
applications have not been affected. a report has been created that you can
send to adobe. can you help?

Answer
Sandy,
This is a question I am reluctant to try to answer for fear I may make the problem worse. But I can offer some suggestions:
First observe what is happening by reading the text in the splash screen while Illustrator is loading. It will say things like loading plug-ins, loading fonts...
If it appears to hang up while a particular process is loading this may help you diagnose the problem.
If it hangs (or dies) on fonts I would first temporarily disable any font management utilities other than FontBook and then try launching Illustrator. If the only font management utility you use is FontBook try disabling User fonts first and see if Illustrator launches. If that fails disable Computer fonts. If you receive any warnings while you are disabling font groups please read them and follow the suggestions that the system offers. If it turns out that fonts are the big issue (unfortunately it usually is) learn to manage your fonts carefully. Only load fonts that you need and use. If someone gives you all of their fonts with a file - launch the file and see what fonts it needs and only load those. Managing fonts can be tedious but improperly installed fonts, duplicate fonts, corrupt fonts and fonts in general will turn out to be the culprit in most BFP's (bad file phenomenas) - I prefer the polite version of BFP.
If it hangs up on plug-ins, hunt down the plug-ins folder that Illustrator is loading from and remove any plug-ins that have been installed after the date that Illustrator was originally installed on your computer. Make a folder on your desktop and label it SuspectPlugins. If removing these plug-ins allows Illustrator to launch normally and you don't miss any of the suspect plug-ins then be happy. If you may need some of these plug-ins add them back 1 at a time keeping track of each as you add them back. And if Illustrator fails to launch when a particular one is added move it back to the suspect folder and continue on until you have only good plugins installed. Then either get newer versions of the "bad" plugins or install them from the original sources.


Good Luck


Nick