ArcGIS Pro crashes when I open any project

[BryanChastain]

I was using the beta a few months ago just fine but now on 1.0, it crashes whenever I open any project (even "Blank"). I get the "ArcGIS Pro has encountered a serious application error and is unable to continue" message.

I'm on Win 7 x64 and have ArcGIS Desktop 10.2.2 installed. I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling Pro but still get the same error.

Any ideas??

[BryanChastain]

Update: Still having the problem even after talking to customer service. For some reason if I make a new administrator user profile on my machine, it can run ArcGIS Pro, but not from my account, even if I uninstall/reinstall or repair. The customer service tech seemed to think it was something to do with corrupt template files, but I'm not so sure. They're now escalating the issue.

[YovavZohar1]

I've encountered the same phenomenon and as in your case, it was connected to the user - If I loged-in to the computer with an administrator user, there was no problem.

Please publish the solution from tech support for the good of all.

Good luck,

Yovav Z.

[JamesPierce]

Same thing for me Yovav.

[BryanChastain]

Thanks - glad to hear I'm not the only one with this problem. I'll report back whenever the escalated support gets back to me. If they aren't able to solve the problem, I may just have our IT department re-image my machine.

[JamesPierce]

Bryan,

I was frustrated by the same thing.  Pro is an interesting application.  I definitely think more development work needs to be done before I begin using it regularly, though it has been a few months since I accessed it, so maybe a lot has changed.

I am intrigued by the application and hope it blossoms into something viable for me.

[JustinRobinson1 · Accepted solution]

Bryan,

After reading around here, and looking and giving some test setups on my machine here, I think I've figured out the problem—at least the reason it's continually crashing on my machine.

Similar to ArcGIS Pro 1.0 constantly crashes my PYTHONPATH is set to allow me to use Arc's 2.7 python instance from the command line. In that post's case it is due to the OSGeo suite being installed, but there are many, many reasons this may be set.

Removing this environment variable is not an option for my workflow with ArcGIS Desktop, so I created a batch file that does it temporarily, then starts ArcPro. The Environment Variable will only affect the started instance of arc pro. Give this a shot, create a new file with a .bat extension (mine was "Launch ArcPro.bat") and put the following code within (make sure to modify the START command to point to your ArcPro installation):

@ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL
REM Fix PythonPath Problems for ArcGIS Pro
SET PYTHONPATH=""
SET PYTHONHOME=""
START "" "C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Pro\bin\ArcGISPro.exe"

Now when you launch ArcPro use that .bat file. A cmd shell will flash open and then close, starting ArcPro.

Give that a shot and see if it corrects your problems, sure worked for me... and here I thought that ArcPro was just tremendously buggy. This also explains why you were able to launch ArcPro from a new user account (cleaned out user EnvVariables).

Cheers.

[BryanChastain]

Thank you Justin - this was a successful workaround! I had already tried changing my PYTHONPATH variable, but I hadn't thought of completely clearing it out. Like you, I'll need to revert my path back after I'm done to do other Python dev, but this will work in the meantime. Hopefully Esri will fix this issue so a workaround isn't needed in future versions.

[PaulDavidson1]

3 years later, ArcPRO 2.1.2, your fix just saved me a lot of frustration.  I was getting ready to toss ArcPRO because it crashed every time in 3 different environments.  I like the batch file method, simple fix that leaves my Python DEV environment alone.

Thumbs up to Justin

[Rohit_Venkat_GandhiMendadhala4]

Hi Justin,

I have tried this fix like creating a .bat file and running it, but this didnt work as I am again facing with the same issue. Can you let me know any other fixes for this issue.