I have had a host of problems after the most recent "forced" Windows 10 upgrade. My audio driver for my preamp no longer works and now Storyline 3 freezes. It gets to "Initializing commands...," and then nothing. Anybody have any advice? If firing a pistol through the PC is all you have, I've already thought of that, trust me. After Microsoft threatened this upgrade for weeks (and literally did it when I wasn't looking...), it finally completed the upgrade, completely blew my audio system out of the water and now threatens my us of software as well. I'd love it if anyone has any ideas about this...
Hi there, Scott. Slowly back away from the pistol.... 😉
Can you try something for me? End any Storyline processes you have running, do a reboot, and then right-click your Storyline 3 icon on your desktop.
Go to Properties in the dropdown, and then click on the Compatibility tab in that window. If you are allowed to, check the box to run the program as administrator.
Then try to launch Storyline 3 again. Let me know what happens, and then we'll see about next steps!
Thanks for your levity - and for your solution. That seemed to do the trick. I got Storyline 3 to launch...finally. But while we're on the subject - what's with all of the constant reactivation all the time? Between version 1, 2 & 3, I'll bet I have "activated" each of my products over 20 times. Why wouldn't I activate a product once, and then have it activated for the rest of the time I was using the product on that one machine? It doesn't take that long to complete the process, but I'm just curious why a "non-subscription" product requires constant re-installation and reactivation all of the time.
But again, my thanks for helping solve the "sticking" issue - that seemed to work well. Now if you get Storyline to run two times in a row without having to activate again, then you'll be a true miracle worker!
Each time Storyline is installed on the machine it'll look for the activation again. It's treating it as a brand new installation - and with Windows updating, that would trigger it too.
Now if Windows hasn't update and you haven't reinstalled Storyline, that's something we'd want to take a deeper look at! Our Support Engineers can help pull some system info and see what may be happening.
After going through the latest Windows update yesterday and activating Storyline, if you shut down your computer and try to open it again - are you prompted to activate Storyline?
I don't typically reinstall Storyline - ever. Windows updates? That's anybody's guess. I confess that I leave "automatic updates" on for convenience, but I'm really rethinking that strategy now. As I said, I'm tired of spending 45 minutes every time there's a minor update and my entire sound system gets blown out. For some reason, Microsoft apparently has never heard of the SoundBlaster cards, because every time they update Windows 10, I reinstall drivers for nearly an hour. And it's for very minor updates - but I digress.
I don't really keep track of what's happening behind the scenes - who has time for all of that? But I know that I have virtually never purposefully reinstalled any of the software - version 1, 2, or 3 - and I have had to reactivate each version multiple times. I don't even know how many, but I'd say conservatively more than five. Which seems excessive - but when you say that Storyline reactivates every time Windows updates, well then that makes sense. It's not particularly comforting, but at least I understand why it's happening. I know it only takes an extra minute, but I just didn't understand why it was happening. Now I do.
I know how painful Windows updates can be and in an odd sense of irony just saw the pop up from Microsoft asking if I'd like to recommend Windows 10 to my friends. Nope, if only as I thought I'd disabled all those pop ups. 🙂
If you see the activation message again, and Windows hasn't told you that they've done any updates please let me know and I can help you get started working with our Support Engineers. They are well equipped to dig into anything else that may be a play here and if it's something determined to be a bug on our end, we'll be able to connect with the rest of our team to find a fix.
I hope you enjoyed a nice weekend, and if there is anything else I can help with, please let me know!
Sorry you're getting stuck, Jill! Did you have a chance to try the steps Crystal recommended above?
If you see a window that is asking for your serial number and it's not already populated there, copy and paste the number from your purchase confirmation email. If you need help, let us know!
Same thing happening here with the Windows upgrade. Sadly, I do not have administrator access on my PC. Am I going to have to have my IT director come to my office every time I need to run Storyline 3? (Which is daily...)
You may only need to install as the admin - but after a Windows update, you'll likely need to install it again. Once it's installed using admin priviledges you can continue as normal and activate with your serial number.
I need your support... because my articulate it was normal before Windows 10 Update in this week. I think thats the problem need a Articulate update to resolve this. I already tried everything with microsoft technical support, my company technical support, everything... I had already sent an email support for the Articulate.
I'm so sorry to hear you're running into that error message. Thanks for opening a support case--you're in good hands! I took a peek into your case, and I can see that our team of Engineers are working together to nail down what's going on in your system.
I'll continue to follow along with your case and share updates here, as needed.
Like Luis, I can't get into my articulate 360 or articulate 3. While "Initializing Commands" I get an error message...."A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program." Support just sent me a link to try some things that didn't work.
Really sorry these steps didn't help! We want to get this sorted out as soon as possible, so I've reopened your case with our engineers. They'll reach out soon to investigate this further.
The fix was easy enough (right-click and run as an administrator) but significant time was lost realizing it was a problem in the first place (it looked as if the application was just taking a long time to load, so this, along with rebooting the computer, was tried several times) then troubleshooting.
John, thanks for coming back with what worked: Launching the program as administrator.
I'm really sorry that you lost time working through it, but it's much appreciated that you shared the fix for everyone! Please let us know if you need anything else.
I had the same issue, so followed the 'Run as administrator' which solved the problem, however i kept getting a pop up saying Storyline wanted to make changes.....
To fix this, i went back and unchecked the run as administrator and ran the run compatibility checker which seemed to have now solved everything
I had the same problem: "initializing commands..." and then Storyline 3 got stuck. I followed the steps in Crystal's post and I can use Storyline again. However, I can't insert any pictures or videos from my laptop, and every time I close Storyline, I need to use the administrator account again to launch Storyline. What am I doing wrong?
37 Replies
Hi there, Scott. Slowly back away from the pistol.... 😉
Can you try something for me? End any Storyline processes you have running, do a reboot, and then right-click your Storyline 3 icon on your desktop.
Go to Properties in the dropdown, and then click on the Compatibility tab in that window. If you are allowed to, check the box to run the program as administrator.
Then try to launch Storyline 3 again. Let me know what happens, and then we'll see about next steps!
Hi Crystal,
Thanks for your levity - and for your solution. That seemed to do the trick. I got Storyline 3 to launch...finally. But while we're on the subject - what's with all of the constant reactivation all the time? Between version 1, 2 & 3, I'll bet I have "activated" each of my products over 20 times. Why wouldn't I activate a product once, and then have it activated for the rest of the time I was using the product on that one machine? It doesn't take that long to complete the process, but I'm just curious why a "non-subscription" product requires constant re-installation and reactivation all of the time.
But again, my thanks for helping solve the "sticking" issue - that seemed to work well. Now if you get Storyline to run two times in a row without having to activate again, then you'll be a true miracle worker!
Best,
Scott
Hi Scott,
Each time Storyline is installed on the machine it'll look for the activation again. It's treating it as a brand new installation - and with Windows updating, that would trigger it too.
Now if Windows hasn't update and you haven't reinstalled Storyline, that's something we'd want to take a deeper look at! Our Support Engineers can help pull some system info and see what may be happening.
After going through the latest Windows update yesterday and activating Storyline, if you shut down your computer and try to open it again - are you prompted to activate Storyline?
Hi Ashley,
I don't typically reinstall Storyline - ever. Windows updates? That's anybody's guess. I confess that I leave "automatic updates" on for convenience, but I'm really rethinking that strategy now. As I said, I'm tired of spending 45 minutes every time there's a minor update and my entire sound system gets blown out. For some reason, Microsoft apparently has never heard of the SoundBlaster cards, because every time they update Windows 10, I reinstall drivers for nearly an hour. And it's for very minor updates - but I digress.
I don't really keep track of what's happening behind the scenes - who has time for all of that? But I know that I have virtually never purposefully reinstalled any of the software - version 1, 2, or 3 - and I have had to reactivate each version multiple times. I don't even know how many, but I'd say conservatively more than five. Which seems excessive - but when you say that Storyline reactivates every time Windows updates, well then that makes sense. It's not particularly comforting, but at least I understand why it's happening. I know it only takes an extra minute, but I just didn't understand why it was happening. Now I do.
Thanks for the explanation.
Scott
Hi Scott,
I know how painful Windows updates can be and in an odd sense of irony just saw the pop up from Microsoft asking if I'd like to recommend Windows 10 to my friends. Nope, if only as I thought I'd disabled all those pop ups. 🙂
If you see the activation message again, and Windows hasn't told you that they've done any updates please let me know and I can help you get started working with our Support Engineers. They are well equipped to dig into anything else that may be a play here and if it's something determined to be a bug on our end, we'll be able to connect with the rest of our team to find a fix.
I hope you enjoyed a nice weekend, and if there is anything else I can help with, please let me know!
I am having the exact same problem. I know I need to reactivate Storyline - but I don't know how.
Sorry you're getting stuck, Jill! Did you have a chance to try the steps Crystal recommended above?
If you see a window that is asking for your serial number and it's not already populated there, copy and paste the number from your purchase confirmation email. If you need help, let us know!
Awesome, Neal. I'm glad that worked. Always a good step to install as administrator to get around any issues like that.
Same thing happening here with the Windows upgrade. Sadly, I do not have administrator access on my PC. Am I going to have to have my IT director come to my office every time I need to run Storyline 3? (Which is daily...)
Hi Keith,
You may only need to install as the admin - but after a Windows update, you'll likely need to install it again. Once it's installed using admin priviledges you can continue as normal and activate with your serial number.
I have the same problem in my articulate.
I need your support... because my articulate it was normal before Windows 10 Update in this week. I think thats the problem need a Articulate update to resolve this. I already tried everything with microsoft technical support, my company technical support, everything... I had already sent an email support for the Articulate.
Hi Luís,
I'm so sorry to hear you're running into that error message. Thanks for opening a support case--you're in good hands! I took a peek into your case, and I can see that our team of Engineers are working together to nail down what's going on in your system.
I'll continue to follow along with your case and share updates here, as needed.
Like Luis, I can't get into my articulate 360 or articulate 3. While "Initializing Commands" I get an error message...."A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program." Support just sent me a link to try some things that didn't work.
Hi Colleen,
Really sorry these steps didn't help! We want to get this sorted out as soon as possible, so I've reopened your case with our engineers. They'll reach out soon to investigate this further.
The Admin tip worked for me . Thanks for the info :0)
Glad that this was able to help you out as well David.
Thanks for chiming in to share and welcome to E-Learning Heroes :)
Thanks, worked for me too! Thanks for the good support
Thanks, Lida! Glad to hear it.
Same problem with Storyline not launching after an Windows update. Will try the suggested fix.
Hey John,
Sorry you're running into this, too! Let us know how you make out after running the repair. We're here to help you!
The fix was easy enough (right-click and run as an administrator) but significant time was lost realizing it was a problem in the first place (it looked as if the application was just taking a long time to load, so this, along with rebooting the computer, was tried several times) then troubleshooting.
John, thanks for coming back with what worked: Launching the program as administrator.
I'm really sorry that you lost time working through it, but it's much appreciated that you shared the fix for everyone! Please let us know if you need anything else.
I had the same issue, so followed the 'Run as administrator' which solved the problem, however i kept getting a pop up saying Storyline wanted to make changes.....
To fix this, i went back and unchecked the run as administrator and ran the run compatibility checker which seemed to have now solved everything
Thanks, Anthony for that update and I'm glad you're back up and running!
Hi everyone
I had the same problem: "initializing commands..." and then Storyline 3 got stuck. I followed the steps in Crystal's post and I can use Storyline again. However, I can't insert any pictures or videos from my laptop, and every time I close Storyline, I need to use the administrator account again to launch Storyline. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance!