Permanent Crash accessing File menu

[Miha_M]

I am stuck and would need urgent help. I am working on one decently complex renovation plan. Today Archicad refuses any access to the File, Edit,... or whatever dropdown Menu. Every single click on it results with instant crash. The bug reporter jumps out, but doesn't do anything, as it vanishes.
I looked into the crash report folder and I see multiple CrashDump*.dmp and multiple GSReport*-FATAL.RPT files there, which correspond to my failed attempts of running Archicad.
The only change between a working and non working Archicad was the current system update (Windows 10 Pro - OS Build 17763.475, KB4495667).

I have tried starting Archicad with a fresh project, on the built-in template. Same result.

<edit> Archicad crashes also on this new project while right-clicking on the selected elevation marker. This is getting critical.

Any advice?

[Miha_M]

It seems the system update is not causing this problem. I have uninstalled the latest update, but I still get a crash. The latest one was selecting Lines from the Toolbox. I deleted all Elevation markers in the new file from template, wanted to draw some lines. Selecting the Lines tool resulted in instant crash.

A "Repair installation" is my next attempt.

[Miha_M]

The "Repair" method doesn't work. Reverting to a repaired 3006 version of Archicad results in a crash while loading a new project file. What is going on here?! I am going from "bad" to "worse"!!!

Deinstallation and a new Install is my next attempt.

[Miha_M]

Failure. I have uninstalled Archicad, used Ccleaner to clean the registry. After that I did a fresh installation. I am able to open a new project file, but any menu I try to access, even a right-click context menu, results in a crash.

I am calling my local GS representative.

[Miha_M]

A new complete uninstall, all Archicad Preferences cleaned https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/knowledgebase/25464/, uninstall of the C++ Redistributable Package, uninstall of all Wibu drivers..., after all that I was left with one rebooted and almost Graphisoft clean system. There were only some traces left in the Windows Registry, but I did not try to delete those entries as I don't want do any additional damage to the whole system.

Another new clean installation results with the same problem. Instant crash while trying to open something from the File menu on a new project file. Even the Bug reporter shows the same behaviour, it jumps out but vanishes again, with no chance to send any crash report.

GS, please help me out. I need to work and my work depends on using Archicad. I would prefer not to reinstall Windows and everything else from scatch, as I had to do that some months ago due to a system disk failure.

One noticed behaviour, if that would help to find a solution - after I open Archicad, which starts normal, I close the first "Create a new Project, ..." dialog window. Archicad is still running, with no project file opened, only the blank background. Now even if I just hover with my mouse over the upper menu, and it doesn't matter if over the File, Edit,... menu, but also over the greyed out archicad tools (default scheme), Archicad crashes. I don't have any problem accessing menus in other programs, it happens here only. I need to find a solution, please!

[Miha_M · Accepted solution]

Solved! Archicad is up & running again. Big thanks to my local distributer with Matjaž & Gorazd!

The solution: if you should have, by any chance, activated the (beta) Unicode UTF-8 support in Windows 10 Pro (as in my case), Archicad might not work any more. With deactivating this beta feature everything goes back to normal. It is strange, since I had this activated for some time (because of some native character display problems with my banking software) and I had no issues with Archicad at all, but the last system update might have changed something about this.