So today my R9 CC just up and died on me right before I needed to render something important. Total nightmare. I’d been using it fine yesterday, then bam – blue circle spinning forever this morning. Felt like screaming into a pillow.
The Panic Setup Phase
First thing I did? Panicked. Obviously. Then I started doing all the dumb stuff:
- Clicked the CC icon like fifty times hoping for magic
- Slammed my keyboard a bit – that sometimes feels productive, right?
- Unplugged the power brick for ten seconds, plugged it back in… nope
Felt completely stuck. That app window was just frozen solid.
Getting My Hands Dirty
Alright, deep breath. Decided to actually troubleshoot. Went into Task Manager – gotta love that place.
- Spotted chilling there using 0% CPU. Suspicious.
- Force closed the bugger, tried launching CC again. Still frozen. Ugh.
Rebooted the whole PC next. Prayed a little. Turned it back on… same cursed blue circle. Nope.
The Settings Rabbit Hole
Remembered I had an update nag last week I kept ignoring. Maybe that bit me? Went digging:
- Opened Settings > Apps > Installed Apps (slow scrolling…)
- Found R9 Creative Cloud – clicked Uninstall
- Got that nasty message: “Uninstall is not working properly. Close background apps.” Classic.
Fired up CCleaner (old faithful), cleaned out some junk temp files. No luck uninstalling still. Was about ready to throw the monitor.
The “Ah-Ha!” (Kinda) Moment
Scrolled through some ancient forum thread while eating cold pizza. One dude mentioned overactive antivirus locking things up. Turned off Windows Defender for five minutes. Held my breath.
Re-ran the uninstaller… and it actually worked this time. Almost dropped my cold pizza. Rebooted again for good measure.
Clean Install Drama
Went straight to the official site, grabbed the installer. Ran it. It asked:
- “Install Location” – nah, I picked the default C: drive path this time.
- “Install Apps?” – unchecked everything except bloody CC. Keep it simple.
Install crawled slower than my motivation on Monday, but eventually finished. Hit Launch… and after a few tense spins, that sweet login screen popped up. Finally.
Moral of this mess? Software makes you want to rip your hair out, and sometimes Defender thinks it’s helping when it’s really just body-slamming your workflow. Backup before updates, folks. Trust me.
