You probably found this article because you recently finally switched to El Capitan (Mac OS 10.11) just like I did – and now you find Illustrator CS5 crashing whenever you want to use the eyedropper tool or when you want to quit Illustrator. I know – this can be can be very annoying – I’ve been there. Done that. Fixed it. Yay!
The problem with Illustrator crashing on quit brings along another problem, which can be even more annoying than the actual crash on quit: the preferences are not saved. So each time you open up Illustrator, you’ll have to dig your way through the preferences panels. Not very practical – not very useful.
Both – the “crash on quit” problem and the “using the eyedropper tool” problem are actually rather easy to fix. You basically just have to rename two files – and that’s it. This includes some digging in the hidden Library folder – but in the end it’s not that difficult.
How to solve the crash on quit issue
First you need to quit Illustrator. Then you have to find the hidden Library folder and open it in Finder. There is actually two Library folders – one for the “Computer” and one for you. We’ll start with the one inside your user directory.
For the second file you need to go the the hard drive – or the folder called “Macintosh HD”. Inside that directory you should see a folder named “Library”. Inside the Library folder go again to “Application Support” > “Adobe” and open it. Inside that folder you should again see a folder called “CS5ServiceManager”. This also needs to be renamed to “CS5ServiceManager.bak”.
Once both files are renamed you should be ready to go. Open up Illustrator and check for yourself: is it still crashing when you either quit or use the eyedropper tool? I hope not.
PS: I just re-discovered the original post that helped me solve this issue:
This totally worked thanks a lot
Nope, still crashes.
still crashing for me if I ever use the drop down menu to navigate between folders when opening or saving. sigh.