Turning a Layer On or Off Causes Interface Freeze

[KWEdwards]

I just had ArcGIS Pro upgraded to the most recent 3.3.0 after running into several errors with 3.2.1. But I have run into a new problem with 3.3.0: in the project I most commonly use, any attempt to turn a layer on or off causes Pro's interface to mostly grey out and become unresponsive. The cursor also gets the spinning circle whenever the mouse is anywhere except the map window.

The truly strange part of this is that the map window continues to operate semi-normally - it can be zoomed in and out and panned (if that tool was selected before attempting the turn on/off), although most right-click functions are also greyed out. Even stranger is that the layer I attempted to switch on/off does so successfully right as the interface stops working!

The close button in the upper right of the interface is also greyed out and unusable, although the minimize and restore buttons operate as usual. My only option to get out of the situation is a CTRL-ALT-DEL. When I do that, ArcGIS Pro does not show as being unresponsive.

I attempted to run the Diagnostic Monitor while trying to turn a layer off, and noticed a single task that never seems to finish running - ArcGIS.Desktop.Internal.Mapping.Operations.UpdateMapMember.Operation.DoAsync:

Has anyone run into a problem like this, or have any ideas for resolving it? I would greatly appreciate any help anyone could provide. Thanks!!

[Robert_LeClair · Accepted solution]

Good morning - I see a related Support Case of a user experiencing the same issue as you.  It was related to XTools being installed on the same computer as ArcGIS Pro.  Do you have XTools installed and if so, can you uninstall to see if this behavior is repeated or is now operating normally?

[KWEdwards]

I missed that, thank you for pointing it out! And I do have XTools installed. I will try that.

[StuartSmith1]

KWEdwards Did the suggestion for XTools work and 3.3.0 now operating normally? I saw in another thread the  suggestion of just clicking on a layer in the contents (TOC) window sometimes works. https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-questions/arcgis-pro-random-freezing/td-p/1171488 by  

wayfaringrob

[KWEdwards]

Yes, it did 'solve' the problem in a sense. At least it allowed me to find a workaround.

In fact, what I did was set up a shortcut to ArcGIS Pro with "/disableaddins" added to the command. So if I need XTools in a particular session, I run Pro from the normal app icon, but if I don't think I'm likely to need it, I run from the new shortcut.

It's a bit of a pain to do, as I end up closing and re-opening Pro a LOT sometimes. But it does work - by doing that, I can avoid crashes altogether.

I'm just hoping XTools will introduce a new version with 3.3 compatibility so that I can go back to running Pro normally again.

UPDATE: Apparently they have! The XTools site now shows that version 24.1 has been released for 3.3 compatibility: https://xtools.pro/en/resources/xtools-pro-24-update-released/

[AllenovDmitriy]

I've got no XTools, but since upgrading to ArcGIS Pro 3.2 I have the same problem with interface freezing while turning layers on/off after running geoprocessing tools with layers that have definition query.

For example, interface freezing begins after Pairwise Clip of two feature classes from DBMS (MS SQL)

Current ArcGIS Pro version 3.3.2

[Robert_LeClair]

Besides XTools, check to see if there are any other 3rd party applications installed for ArcGIS Pro that "may" be causing the application to freeze.  In addition, you can perform an ArcGIS Pro soft reset.  Instructions to do so are here - How To: Perform an ArcGIS pro Soft Reset (esri.com)

[AllenovDmitriy]

It didn't help 😞