Illustrator CS4 crashes every few minutes.

Question

I have huge problems because the program crashes every few minutes, when doing all sort of things but mainly when moving objects and clipping masks.
It even damages some files, once it crashes I tried to open the file and the program cannot do it.
Please help, my boss is killing me and gave me a warning already for low performance... Auch!
I know it is not the computer cause I di have a nice dual processor dual core computer with 4 Gb or RAM and multiple hard drives with at least 350 Gb free on each.
I have heard a way to stop all services through the registry but not sure if that will do the trick and how to actually do it but I'm desesperated at this point I can try anything.
Any Idea?
Thanks
Daniel

Answer 1

Daniel, presuming you have tried the closedown suggested in post #2:
Is the folder also empty if you look with Illy open or after closing it instead of crashing it?
If it is, it may be worth to make a search for the Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings folder and see whether a live/corrupted one may be tucked away somewhere else.
In a serious case like this, you may consider moving/deleting the whole folder. Full instructions are shown in the hint Move the folder.
If nothing helps, you may consider to:
Reinstall Acrobat;
Search and destroy adobefnt**.list files;
Move all non system fonts out of the Font folder (or whatever it is called on a Mac); if that solves the issue, move them back in bundles until you find the corrupt one(s).
If nothing else helps, you may consider reinstalling, and this technote may be relevant if a normal reinstall does not help: http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs4clean.html