Quark Forums

System - Windows XP SP2 - 2 GB Ram - 20 GB (free space) remaining of current hard drive.

Although I did NOT encounter this problem on my iMac, I DID on my Windows system.

I launch the application, wait a few seconds for the splash screen to appear, and then instead of fully loading Quark, the splash screen remains indefinitely. I waited as long as a half hour at one point - still didn't fully load.I always wind up having to close the program through my Task Manager. Has anyone else experienced this on a Windows system (with Quark Xpress version 8 or above)? What can be done to fix this problem?

 By the way, both the initial installation (which was an upgrade from 7.5) and the update (8.01) were done with no problems at all. Any suggestions / help with this would be greatly appreciated.

 You should try the following steps:

1) Create a new Preferences folder, and relaunch QuarkXPress. Please follow the instructions that you will find in our public knowledge base, search for the solution titled "XPress Preferences File is Damaged" -- or search for Solution AE0142.

2)  Move the XTensions folder out of the QuarkXPress program folder, and relaunch the application.

Tell us if one of those steps helps, otherwise get in touch with our technical support team and we will investigate further.

As per your instructions I navigated to: C:\Program Files\Quark\QuarkXpress 8 and created a Preferences folder.

FYI: there was no previous Preferences folder.

Upon completion of the creation of the Preferences folder, I launched Quark Xpress 8.01. Unfortunately, it is still behaving as before - hanging indefinitely at the splash screen.

Please advise.

 Then please apply step 2) -- remove the XTensions folder from the QuarkXPress 8 application folder.

Other steps that you can try:

3) Verify that the folder C:\Documents and Settings\All users\Application Data\Quark has read-write permissions ("full access") 

4) Clean the font cache. Follow the instructions that you find in our knowledge base -- search for Solution AE0249.

NB: after each step, empty the folder Preferences that you have created at step 1).

5) If that doesn't help, call our technical support -- you will find our contact information here.

Hi Steve,

In case you have installed any custom fonts (i.e. apart from the default system fonts), kindly disable them or remove them temprorialy. Delete the fonts cache and then restart system, delet teh preferences and relaunch the QuarkXPress 8 application.

Are you using any font management tools on your system?

Thank you very much for your attention to this. I appreciate all of your possible solutions to the problem that I'm experiencing.

After having tried each of these with the same result (stuck at the splash screen), I'm in the process of consulting with a tech support representative. I'm hoping to have this resolved as soon as possible.

I should add that I previously installed, launched and and successfully used Quark Xpress 5, 6 and 7.5 on the same computer. I never experienced the problem that I did with the current version 8. Unless there was some drastic change made to the application from 7.5 to 8 that I'm not aware of,  I don't understand why I'm experiencing this particular problem.