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!
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.
As I wrote above, restart of my PC does not help. I have even tried to uninstall and reinstall PL, but the result remain the same. I have uploaded a screenshot of how the program behaves during start-up (see below).
Now there is only one day left of my trial period, and I’m not sure I want to buy the product until I know for sure that this problem has been fixed. So, what to do now…? Is there a way to extend the trial period so I can fix this problem before I decide to buy …?
That doesn’t look like a typical “NVIDIA black screen”, caused by TDR timeout.
Any clues in PhotoLab.txt log?
Windows EventLog (App and System)?
Any crash dumps?
As others not encounter this, seems the issue with your Windows OS, GPU driver, user right, whatever - and not with PL itself (as its works previously for you).
I suggest to check what you install or auto-update in the last days / weeks and try to uninstall / revert, to previous state, etc. May not a bad idea to temporary turn off antivirus/firewall and see what’s happen. May try to disable the CPU integrated graphics (or do the opposite, try with the CPU integrated GPU), try to clear “DirectX Shader Cache” (D3DSCache), etc. If you remember last opened folder with PL, than rename that folder, try to open one photo with “Open with DxO PhotoLab” (to rule out folder issues, may use photo what never opened with PL).
Anyhow, looks (for me) some nVidia driver issue. So, may a good idea to look around on that area (like Google it the nVidia black screen")
I also suggest to check the PL “startup process” with Process Monitor (from Microsoft) as a “last resort”, may you found out something (link below). I not say evident to use/check result of ProcMon, list can be quite long, but it can give incredible detail list on File, Registry, Network, Thread activities, and may help to trace down the issue. Example: its failed (can’t find) in some .NET assembly, etc.
Example screenshot: PL read the config file during startup:
Windows reporting that PhotoLab is not responding.
Be patient, and see what happen after a 5 minute. “Not responding” sometimes not a really valid message (just Windows don’t get “heartbeat” signal for a while from the application, but application run itself fine)
Thanks for all the good suggestions - I ended up filing a ticket a DXO support. Let’s see what they are saying…
In the mean time I noticed that I had exactly the same problem with another photo editing program (OM workspace), which is indicating that it is not a PL problem, but rather a general Windows and/or NVIDIA problem. A bit of Googling revealed that the latest Windows security updates have caused a lot of issues. So I tried to uninstall the latest update (from April 16th), and now I am able to use OM workspace again.
Unfortunately I cannot test if this also has solved the problems with PhotoLab, as my trial period has expired…
