[sorry this is so long]
Hi Sue, I am another noobee to Arduino, although I've been programming for years. I've been running
both IDE 0022 and 1.0 on my two WinXP machines, and have been having tons of problems with
various issues. I also notice that practically everyone [meaning 1000s of others] have problems
getting things sorted out too.
Currently, the IDEs run fine on my netbook, but keep hanging up my larger notebook - this last comes
and goes, and I don't know why. When this happens I also have slow compiles and slow startup and
shutdown on the IDE s.w., and then the machine will not even turn off properly. It hangs up and gives
an error that the Arduino IDE has not finished running, even though I exited it, and it does not
show up in the Task Manager. So, exiting never quite shuts down the IDE. What ??????????????????
Personally, I think there is a fundamental problem with IDE 1.0 that has not been fixed, so I avoid
using the one machine.
That being said, there are some things to try.
-
when you plugged in the Arduino board the first time, which should have been with the IDE
NOT running, did you get driver installation instructions?
-
did you select the proper board and serial port in the IDE Tools menu? NOTE - it might take
some doing to figure out which COMPORT the board is actually connected to, depending
on what all is installed on your machine.
-
also I find that many times compilation and uploading will hang, and I have to keep pressing
"Verify" or "Upload" to get it to complete. [I really think there is a fundamental problem with
the IDE, as noted].
-
if item 1 or 2 don't fix it, you might try changing to "verbose" compile mode, and this will
maybe display some useful error message. You have go to "File > Preferences" and edit
preferences.txt to say "build.verbose=true". NOTE - you have to exit the IDE before saving
the edited file, or the IDE will overwrite it.
BTW, one thing I found after doing all this is, on the machine that hangs, the error message
says "cannot delete core.a", when the compiler hangs.
When I look in the proper directory [c:~documents......\build771899352394394.tmp], I indeed find
file core.a left in there [usually .tmp directory files are erased] and cannot delete it. For some
reason its attribute is set to DON'T DELETE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, or somesuch.
Truly bizarre.
I have to reboot the machine and then go back to the temp directory, and then I can delete
core.a. Duh!
Hint, hint [for the IDE developers :(].