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Rainmeter continually crashes and I cannot load skins
Posted: February 27th, 2018, 4:40 pm
by Brasillion
Yesterday morning, my Rainmeter stopped working altogether. When I attempt to launch Rainmeter, a popup window says "Rainmeter desktop customization tool has stopped working", following the application closing. I have tried clean reinstalls, and stable builds, I have updated drivers, deleted and reinstalled skins, but nothing seems to work. And I cannot find any Quarantined files from antivirus, so I am not sure what to do here.
This morning on startup, the default skins loaded and AutheticWeather began to launch, however it all crashed a minute after startup.
Is there anything you guys can recommend I do? I have used this application for months with no issues to suddenly have nothing functioning. And while this may sound dramatic (because it certainly is) it has been demoralizing to not be able to fix something that made my desktop special.
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you in advance
Re: Rainmeter continually crashes and I cannot load skins
Posted: February 27th, 2018, 5:20 pm
by balala
I think certain skin could be guilty. Even if you didn't change / rewrite anything, this isn't impossible.
Try to follow eclectic-tech's description, available here:
https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?p=144131#p144131
Make sure you load one skin at a time, until Rainmeter crashes again. If this is happening, you found the guilty skin.
If you did, we'll see what is the cause of the issue.
Re: Rainmeter continually crashes and I cannot load skins
Posted: February 27th, 2018, 5:27 pm
by Brasillion
balala wrote:I think certain skin could be guilty. Even if you didn't change / rewrite anything, this isn't impossible.
Try to follow eclectic-tech's description, available here:
https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?p=144131#p144131
Make sure you load one skin at a time, until Rainmeter crashes again. If this is happening, you found the guilty skin.
If you did, we'll see what is the cause of the issue.
Hmmmm, initially I was not able to find this file path but I think I fixed it. I think I am going to give this a go when possible.
Edit: I deleted the file and tried to relaunch. It still crashed. I restarted my PC, it launched on startup but still crashed with the default skins. What do I do now?
Re: Rainmeter continually crashes and I cannot load skins
Posted: February 27th, 2018, 6:13 pm
by balala
Brasillion wrote:Edit: I deleted the file and tried to relaunch. It still crashed. I restarted my PC, it launched on startup but still crashed with the default skins. What do I do now?
Eventually try completely delet the Skins folder (however make sure you have a backup) and try again to re-launch. Still crashes?
If it does, I have to refere again to eclectic-tech's one previous post:
https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?p=144877#p144877
Re: Rainmeter continually crashes and I cannot load skins
Posted: February 27th, 2018, 6:42 pm
by eclectic-tech
Brasillion wrote:Hmmmm, initially I was not able to find this file path but I think I fixed it. I think I am going to give this a go when possible.
Edit: I deleted the file and tried to relaunch. It still crashed. I restarted my PC, it launched on startup but still crashed with the default skins. What do I do now?
A couple of things I think you need to know... Once you load a skin that crashes Rainmeter,
Rainmeter will continue to crash on startup because it remembers which skins were loaded, and will load them again on startup.
In order to correct this, you can delete the rainmeter.ini file, which is usually in "
%appdata%\roaming\rainmeter" folder. This folder is normally hidden by Windows, so you may need to have Windows explorer "show hidden files" so you can find it. You can change this in the 'View" section of the explorer window by checking the box:
showhidden.png
With 'rainmeter.ini' file deleted, Rainmeter will re-create it on startup, and load the default illustro skins.
Now you need to edit, update, or delete the skin(s) that caused the crash.
If you load them to test, and Rainmeter crashes, you will need to follow the steps to reset Rainmeter by deleting 'rainmeter.ini' again.
Yes, it is a repetitive process, but it is the simplest way to get Rainmeter working again once a skin crashes it.
Hope this helps you find the problem...
Re: Rainmeter continually crashes and I cannot load skins
Posted: February 27th, 2018, 6:47 pm
by jsmorley
BTW, you can just open Windows Explorer to any folder, say "My PC" for instance, and just paste or type:
%APPDATA%\Rainmeter
In the path field at the top. That will take you directly there, even if you have it set to "hidden" in Windows.
Then you can edit or delete Rainmeter.ini to get things working again.
%APPDATA% is already defined at the "Roaming" folder level, so you don't need to add that.
Re: Rainmeter continually crashes and I cannot load skins
Posted: February 27th, 2018, 6:49 pm
by balala
eclectic-tech wrote:A couple of things I think you need to know... Once you load a skin that crashes Rainmeter,
Rainmeter will continue to crash on startup because it remembers which skins were loaded, and will load them again on startup.
In order to correct this, you can delete the rainmeter.ini file, which is usually in "
%appdata%\roaming\rainmeter" folder. This folder is normally hidden by Windows, so you may need to have Windows explorer "show hidden files" so you can find it. You can change this in the 'View" section of the explorer window by checking the box:showhidden.png
With 'rainmeter.ini' file deleted, Rainmeter will re-create it on startup, and load the default illustro skins.
Now you need to edit, update, or delete the skin(s) that caused the crash.
If you load them to test, and Rainmeter crashes, you will need to follow the steps to reset Rainmeter by deleting 'rainmeter.ini' again.
Yes, it is a repetitive process, but it is the simplest way to get Rainmeter working again once a skin crashes it.
Hope this helps you find the problem...
I posted a link to one of your previous posts, which explains the same procedure. And Brasillion said he did delete the Rainmeter.ini and the app is still crashing. That's why I proposed to delete the Skins folder (after creating a backup).
Re: Rainmeter continually crashes and I cannot load skins
Posted: February 27th, 2018, 7:09 pm
by jsmorley
Re: Rainmeter continually crashes and I cannot load skins
Posted: February 27th, 2018, 7:52 pm
by Brasillion
Wow, this post is highly detailed. Thank you so much for your thorough write-up. I am going to attempt these steps as soon as I can. I will update this post if I run into issues or if the program begins to function again.