CrossOver Support - Community Forums

Ever since I upgraded from Crossover 20 to Crossover 21 (currently 21.1 (21.1.0.33869)), the Crossover application often crashes when attempting to launch: The Dock icon bounces a few times then the error log to send to Apple appears. Just a few minutes ago I had to try 6 times before the application successfully launched. Once launched it is completely stable and runs the software I have installed into it – mostly Lord of the Rings Online – perfectly. It's just this Crossover application launch issue. This never occurred with Crossover 20, it has occurred most of the (possibly every) time I have attempted to launch Crossover 21.

I have taken to leaving Crossover running all the time just to avoid this problem. The only time Crossover gets shut down is when I restart or shut down my Mac, which is rather infrequent.

I doubt this is some issue being experienced by other users. I know for a fact that there are other Mac users of Crossover 21 who are not experiencing this issue because I provide technical support for Mac users of Lord of the Rings Online and no one who participates in the LOTRO Mac Technical Support Forum at lotro.com has complained about this.

When I upgraded, I had problems getting Crossover to update itself from v20 to v21 and then I had trouble getting the new version of the application to accept my license. I had to get help from Codeweavers technical support which had me fully delete my installation of Crossover then download the newest version and then generate a license file to install manually. Could this have something to do with the crashing-upon-launch issue I am experiencing?

Hi John,

I would be very surprised if the manually generated license files were causing your issues. Are you running any anti-virus or CleanMyMac X? If you're not, I'd recommend reaching out to support again - it's possible they'll recommend a full uninstall and reinstall of CrossOver, but they might have some other tricks up their sleeves too.

Best,
Meredith

Thank you for the courtesy of you reply, Meredith.

I am not running any antivirus, I'm aware of the potential issues with such things and Crossover.

I will do as you suggested and contact support directly.

I did a full deletion following the instructions on this page:
https://www.codeweavers.com/support/wiki/mac/mactutorial/uninstall
...except I decided to preserve my preferences. After reinstalling, the Crossover application continued to crash upon launch.

So I did another full deletion following the instructions on that page but this time I trashed my preferences, too. The application now launches without trouble. I was easily able to set my preferences including my bottle directory so Crossover is now running for me as expected. I assume there was some corruption in my preferences file.

Thanks again for responding to my message here in the forum.

==
edit: Nope, once I changed the preferences it started crashing again. I just contacted support as you suggested earlier.

I haven't received any reply from support – which is odd since I am accustomed to 24hr or less turnaround on support requests from Codeweavers – so I decided to try to track down the problem on my own.

I’ve done quite a bit of experimentation and I’ve discovered that the crash-upon-launch issue is being caused when I add applications to Crossover’s “Favorites” list. I can change my bottle directory and set all my preferences and otherwise set the Crossover application any way I like and it will function normally with no crashing when I attempt to launch it. However, if I add any application to the Crossover application’s “Favorites” list, subsequent attempts to launch the Crossover application result in crashes. I can eventually get it to launch successfully, but this requires anywhere from 6 to 15 attempts.

At first I thought the problem might be a result of changing the bottle directory, but when I did only that – making no other changes to Crossover's preferences – I was not able to cause the Crossover application to crash upon launch. All other changes, whether made through Crossover's GUI or via Terminal, also resulted in no crashes upon launch. But if I add any installed Windows applications to Crossover's "Favorites" list, any subsequent attempt to launch the Crossover application results in a crash upon launch as I have previously described.

So for now, I am not adding anything to my Crossover favorites list and that is a good enough workaround for me. However, this is something that you and your colleagues might wish to investigate further. I will be happy to perform testing if you have a specific procedure you might like me to attempt. I can provide more detail, including screenshots or even a video, if that would be helpful as you attempt to replicate my problem.

Hi John,

Excellent sleuthing! Although I am still stumped, since adding to Favorites is not causing any problems for me.

I don't see any new tickets from you in our system - did you enter them under a different account? If I can find your ticket, I can check in on it.

Best,
Meredith

All of a sudden Crossover is crashing every time I launch it too. Is there a way I can try to fix it without reinstalling it? (I have a lot of apps that would also need to be reinstalled)

Reinstalling CrossOver is a simple drag-to-trash then reinstall from a known good source. There is actually nothing to install, you just drag your downloaded program to the application folder. Your bottles will not be affected at all.

That said, I would trash your preference files for CrossOver as well. They could be responsible for that behaviour.

BV wrote:

All of a sudden Crossover is crashing every time I launch it too. Is
there a way I can try to fix it without reinstalling it? (I have a
lot of apps that would also need to be reinstalled)

The problem is almost certainly related to your preferences, not the Crossover application or your license files. So I would start with Andreas's second suggestion: Trash your preference files:
Go to...
~/Library/Preferences
...and delete any files which begin with com.codeweavers.* except your two license files:
com.codeweavers.CrossOver.license
com.codeweavers.CrossOver.sig

Crossover should then launch for you. Try enabling one thing at a time/changing one thing at a time. After each change, quit out of Crossover and attempt to relaunch it. If Crossover fails to launch after making a change, that change is the cause of your problem. Once you determine the specific cause of your problem, the workaround is to again delete those files, then launch Crossover, and make all your desired changes except the one that will cause the problem. In my case, I had to refrain from adding any items to Crossover's "favorites" list – I will note that I have my bottles in a custom location, not the default location, and it is quite possible that both of these conditions must be in effect in order for Crossover 21 to experience this crash-upon-launch issue. I will repeat that I did not have this issue in Crossover 20.