PhotoLab 9.7 crash on startup

DxO PhotoLab Windows topics
1

I’m a new user here and have downloaded the trial version of PhotoLab 9.7. I am really enjoying the program and very impressed with the features and have had no issues at all running it… until now!

With two days left of my trial period I wanted to try the program one last time before buying it. And now I suddenly cannot start the program! The splash screen appears and I can press the “Launch Trial” button. The progress bar in the lower left corner of the splash screen completes, but then nothing happens apart from a completely black screen and Windows reporting that PhotoLab is not responding.

I have tried restarting my PC several times and installing latest versions of all drivers - still no success.

My system:

  • PhotoLab 9.7.0 Build 643
  • Windows 11 (25H2 build 26200.8246)
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
  • RAM: 32,0 GB
  • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX5060Ti (driver v. 595.79)
  • SSD: 1TB + 2TB

Hope someone are able to help me out here… I was this close to hitting the buy button!

2

In my case (RTX4070/595.79 and many older versions, i7–14700KF, no iGPU) screen goes black for 3–4 seconds about twice a week due to “TDR errors” reported by nvlddmkm in the System EventLog. It’s a sequence of 5 errors, first with ID 14, then four ID 153. It happens usually in Web browser and Photos app, once in notepad (sic! perhaps due to GPU use by Win for font smoothing?), and once in PhotoLab. It’s a “well known” problem with NVIDIA drivers, maybe partially MS is “guilty”. I just restart Windows after such events and carry on.