Hard to start Inkscape 0.92.2 on Windows 10

[Fuziko]

Hello Inkscape users and developers,

Recently, I have upgraded Inkscape to the version of 0.92.2 (the newest one), however this version seems to be hard to start on Windows 10. Everything is fine with all previous versions. In order to start Inkscape successfully, I have to restart my laptop or sign out and sign in again. Any one here has the same problem with Inkscape 0.92.2? Any solution to this? Thanks lots.

[brynn]

Welcome to the forum!

On Windows, the first time you run Inkscape after installing it, it takes much longer to start than usual.  For some reason, it takes a while to cache the fonts.  If you have a lot of fonts, it could take 3 or 4 minutes.

After it starts the first time, future starts will be much faster.

[Moini]

What happens when it 'doesn't work'? Can you start Inkscape from the command line?

[Fuziko]

Welcome to the forum!

On Windows, the first time you run Inkscape after installing it, it takes much longer to start than usual.  For some reason, it takes a while to cache the fonts.  If you have a lot of fonts, it could take 3 or 4 minutes.

After it starts the first time, future starts will be much faster.

Thank you Brynn.

The thing which really does matter is that Inkscape 0.92.2 could not start successfully many times, even though I were waiting for long time. Only temporary way to proceed is to restart Windows or log out. However, with the previous version of 0.92.1, it is 100% OK. I guess there could be something wrong with the newer version.


-----------------

What happens when it 'doesn't work'? Can you start Inkscape from the command line?

I just have to restart the laptop or log out and login again. I am using Windows, so have not tried the command line.

[Moini]

What leads you to have to restart the computer? What happens? Just nothing? Does it freeze the whole computer?

You do have a command line on Windows, too.
Here's an instruction for various Windows versions:
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open-command-prompt-2618089

When you have it open, just enter:
inkscape

(then hit return)

What does it say on the screen now?

[brynn]

In addition to Moini's questions, I have a couple.

How are you opening Inkscape?  Are you clicking the desktop icon, to open a new blank document?  Or are you directly opening a pre-existing SVG file (by double-clicking on it)?

If it's a pre-existing file, how large is it?  If you ask Inkscape to open too large of a file, sometimes you might get an error message, but sometimes just nothing happens.

If you're opening a new blank file, then continue on with Moini's suggestions. 

[Fuziko]

What leads you to have to restart the computer? What happens? Just nothing? Does it freeze the whole computer?

You do have a command line on Windows, too.
Here's an instruction for various Windows versions:
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open-command-prompt-2618089

When you have it open, just enter:
inkscape

(then hit return)

What does it say on the screen now?

Thank you Moini. I will try the command line and see what happens.

What leads you to have to restart the computer? What happens? Just nothing? Does it freeze the whole computer?

Nothing happened after few minutes. After that I checked the running processes (task manager) to see if Inkscape was running, but nothing related to Inkscape was found. And the only way is to restart the laptop or sign out, and then start Inkscape.

How are you opening Inkscape?  Are you clicking the desktop icon, to open a new blank document?  Or are you directly opening a pre-existing SVG file (by double-clicking on it)?

I tried both (a blank document and a small SVG file), and got the same issue. I will try the suggestions from Moini and see.

Thank you for your reply have nice time.

[Moini]

Hopefully, the command line output will reveal some info - please post what you get!

[flamingolady]

Do you have a lot of fonts installed?  As Brynn mentioned, it can take a long time for them to load.  You can go into your fonts directory and hide some or most of them, hide the ones that you don't use very often and the loading time should lessen.   Specifically, your fonts are located in c:\windows\fonts (at least in win 7 it is).  Or you can access it via the control panel.  There is a show/hide column.  Select the fonts to hide (can hold down CTRL in order to choose multiple fonts), then click on Hide which is on the show/hide tab in the top bar (not sure of the proper name of the task bar).  On my laptop it does take some time (under a minute) for the task to complete.  I had tons of fonts that I never realized I had, and rarely use, so I hid most of mine.   That should help some. (sidenote, if you select some fonts that have already been hid, it thinks you are trying to show them again, and you may see a dropdown box appear, if that happens, just select Hide).
BTW, you had asked this above - and yes, you can go directly to C:\Program Files (86)\Inkscape and click on the exe file.  I have found that the first few times you do that it loads fairly fast, then it seems to slow down again, but that could just be me.
dee

[Fuziko]

Hopefully, the command line output will reveal some info - please post what you get!

It does not work too. I also have to log out and login again in order for a successful start from the command line. But with the version 0.9.1, it is ok. Just after 5 seconds, everything is ready.

--------------------------------

Do you have a lot of fonts installed?  As Brynn mentioned, it can take a long time for them to load.  You can go into your fonts directory and hide some or most of them, hide the ones that you don't use very often and the loading time should lessen.   Specifically, your fonts are located in c:\windows\fonts (at least in win 7 it is).  Or you can access it via the control panel.  There is a show/hide column.  Select the fonts to hide (can hold down CTRL in order to choose multiple fonts), then click on Hide which is on the show/hide tab in the top bar (not sure of the proper name of the task bar).  On my laptop it does take some time (under a minute) for the task to complete.  I had tons of fonts that I never realized I had, and rarely use, so I hid most of mine.   That should help some. (sidenote, if you select some fonts that have already been hid, it thinks you are trying to show them again, and you may see a dropdown box appear, if that happens, just select Hide).
BTW, you had asked this above - and yes, you can go directly to C:\Program Files (86)\Inkscape and click on the exe file.  I have found that the first few times you do that it loads fairly fast, then it seems to slow down again, but that could just be me.
dee

Thanks flamingolady,

In this situation, this issue just happens to the version 0.9.2 but not 0.9.1. So, i guess fonts do not really matter. However, I will try and see.

[Moini]

What is 'it does not work'? Can you give some details? What does it print out?

[Fuziko]

What is 'it does not work'? Can you give some details? What does it print out?

Just nothing happens. No response, no clues to Inkscape process in Task Manager are seen. Again, I stress that the version 0.9.1 is absolutely fine. For the time being, I will use the older version and wait for the new update.

[Moini]

I'd rather suggest you look through the bug reports, and report this issue, else it's not going to be fixed (https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape)

One last thing to try before you do so, in case it has already been fixed, would be to install the latest development version of the 0.92 branch.
It could be it's fixed already.

You can find the latest files at https://ci.appveyor.com/project/inkscape/inkscape/history (take the latest one that starts with 0.92.x). To get to the downloads, select MINGW64 for 64 bit systems, then click on 'artifacts' in the top right corner of the screen.

[brynn]

Little bell is ringing, way back in head......  Wasn't there an issue in the last couple of years, where Inkscape just would not start if....I can't remember exactly what it was.  It was either having Chinese fonts installed, or it was having a font installed whose title contains a special character (such as (&%$ etc.)  Or maybe those are 2 separate bugs.  I thought they had been fixed, but maybe not, or maybe a regression happened.  Let's see what I can find in the bug tracker.....

Edit
Couldn't find.  Plus, you do eventually get Inkscape to start.  It's just you have to log out/in or restart the computer.

I'll try searching for this problem already being reported.

[Fuziko]

I'd rather suggest you look through the bug reports, and report this issue, else it's not going to be fixed (https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape)

One last thing to try before you do so, in case it has already been fixed, would be to install the latest development version of the 0.92 branch.
It could be it's fixed already.

You can find the latest files at https://ci.appveyor.com/project/inkscape/inkscape/history (take the latest one that starts with 0.92.x). To get to the downloads, select MINGW64 for 64 bit systems, then click on 'artifacts' in the top right corner of the screen.

Many thanks Moini. I downloaded the developing binary package. I'll check it and report results here.

Little bell is ringing, way back in head......  Wasn't there an issue in the last couple of years, where Inkscape just would not start if....I can't remember exactly what it was.  It was either having Chinese fonts installed, or it was having a font installed whose title contains a special character (such as (&%$ etc.)  Or maybe those are 2 separate bugs.  I thought they had been fixed, but maybe not, or maybe a regression happened.  Let's see what I can find in the bug tracker.....

Edit
Couldn't find.  Plus, you do eventually get Inkscape to start.  It's just you have to log out/in or restart the computer.

I'll try searching for this problem already being reported.

Thanks lots Brynn. Have a nice day. 

[brynn]

Well I didn't find any existing report.  That doesn't mean there isn't one.  The searching for the bug tracker leaves a bit to be desired.  Plus, if the report uses any technical kind of language, I would not understand it.

So if the problem does not seem to be fixed in the development version, I suggest you still search, before reporting this.

[Fuziko]

Well I didn't find any existing report.  That doesn't mean there isn't one.  The searching for the bug tracker leaves a bit to be desired.  Plus, if the report uses any technical kind of language, I would not understand it.

So if the problem does not seem to be fixed in the development version, I suggest you still search, before reporting this.

Thanks again Brynn. Happily, the developing version does not suffer from the above issue. It starts within 5 sec. Apparently, something wrong happens to the version of 0.9.2.

Have great time.

[brynn]

Oh, that's good news!  Thanks for letting us know 

[Arcaxon]

Hi there! Sorry to barge in on a several months old topic but I have this similar problem! I didn't wanna make a new thread about it though since I found this one using google and thought it be easier for others who have the similar issue to see this, although let me know if I should start a new thread.

So here's what's up:

With install 0.92.2 AND 0.92.1 inkscape refuses to work, it will "launch" but nothing will show up and all that will be visible is the inkscape vector Graphics Editor in the Task manager with 0% CPU around 10mb of memory and 0mb/s Disk usage(Screenshot Attached). It will stay there and not do anything even if I leave it for hours.

I had this problem occur before and it would happen after a WINDOWS UPDATE, the first few times I re-installed my OS since I NEED inkscape to work and I was desesperate at the time and figured out that it infact upon re-installing the OS, it worked! The problem though is EVERY NEW WINDOWS UPDATE inkscape and photoshop, would stop working. So I beleived there was something wrong with my OS, and ran the windows update diagnosis on it and a constant problem would show up: "Corruption of the windows update database". Normally after running the trouble shooter inkscape and others would launch once more.. but not this time.

And thus it has stayed stuck like this ever since the last windows update.

I do beleive this issue has to do with more problems within the OS but I wanted to know if you guys knew a solution or had any theories as to why it happens.

So currently, no versions of inkscape seem to work on my PC. Thank you for taking your time to read this and I wish you a wonderful day!

[brynn]

Welcome to the forum!

Sorry to hear about the troubles.  This is the first time I've heard this problem.  But it doesn't sound like it's anything that can be fixed from the Inkscape side.  I certainly would investigate the "Corruption of the windows update database" problem though.  To me, based on your description, it seems clear that's where the problem is. 

I'm sure MS will be able to provide support.  I would be surprised if it would require reinstalling the operating system.  But I'm not exactly an expert.

Since reinstalling the os fixes the problem but eventually it comes back, it seems like either you might be doing something wrong (the same thing, every time) somewhere along the line.  Or you could be getting some kind of virus or malware.  Do you run anti-virus and other malware blocking software?

Well, there's really not much we can do, or even suggest.  But as I said, I'm sure microsoft can help.  The last time I looked, this is where you can get help with Windows issues:  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us

[Moini]

I'd also make sure to only have a single version of Inkscape on my computer, and then I'd go and read in the Inkscape FAQ:
https://inkscape.org/en/learn/faq/#inkscape-does-not-start

[Arcaxon]

So I found a solution to the problem! I spent hours on chat with a Microsoft representative and after testing some stuff it seems that the solution to my problem was:

Step 1. Open Msconfig with Run
Step 2. Go to "Services" Tab and click: "Hide all Microsoft services" <-VERY IMPORTANT!
Step 3. Click select: "Disable all" and then reboot the computer!

That solved my issue though!
Thanks so much for the replies and the warm welcome!

(Also second little issue, uh earlier it seemed you had a problem with yoru SQL database or something, as I was unable to view the website because of: " smf_sessions' is marked as crashed and should be repaired " after deleting the cookies for the website the message changed to something else related to tables too. Just wanted to uh leave this here too just in case.)

[brynn]

(Also second little issue, uh earlier it seemed you had a problem with yoru SQL database or something, as I was unable to view the website because of: " smf_sessions' is marked as crashed and should be repaired " after deleting the cookies for the website the message changed to something else related to tables too. Just wanted to uh leave this here too just in case.)

Right, thanks for mentioning it.  Yeah, sorry about that.  I'm not sure what happened yet, but I got it repaired.