Arduino 1.8.12 crash on startup ..(SOLVED)

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

I re-insalled from scratch, but same issue .. I ran the debug version and got this ..

C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino>arduino_debug.exe
Set log4j store directory C:\Users\patmo\AppData\Local\Arduino15
Loading configuration...
Initialising packages...
java.lang.NullPointerException
        at cc.arduino.contributions.packages.ContributionsIndexer.parseIndex(ContributionsIndexer.java:134)
        at processing.app.BaseNoGui.initPackages(BaseNoGui.java:483)
        at processing.app.Base.<init>(Base.java:273)
        at processing.app.Base.main(Base.java:150)

Would be most grateful for a pointer as to what has gone wrong and how to fix it.

Thanks!

2

is that the whole error ?

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3

Thanks, yes that was the whole error message.

It turns out this was not version related, but related to a corruption somewhere in the additional boards definitions.

I deleted the relevant package files in the \AppData\Local\Arduino15 folder, and order was restored!

Pat