Under Tools/Board/Board Manager I can no longer see any mention of the ESP8266 platform under 'esp8266 by ESP8266 Community'
In addition if I search for 'esp...' as part of a filtered search nothing shows presumably because the link to 'http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json' does not connect although it is workable in a browser window.
Been to now been running version 1-8-5 & have just done a fresh installation of 1-8-6 but no change to problem.
After opening Tools > Board > Boards Manager, and waiting for the downloads to finish, do you see an error message at the bottom of the Boards Manager window?
pert:
After opening Tools > Board > Boards Manager, and waiting for the downloads to finish, do you see an error message at the bottom of the Boards Manager window?
Firstly thanks for the prompt response.
Using IDE 1.8.5 when I goto Board Manager I see down the bottom of that popup momentarily the following
"Downloading platforms index"
BUT .... at the bottom of the front screen the following errors or similar
Error downloading http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json; ....
Invalid library found in C:\Users\Ray Bright\Documents\Arduino\Libraries\ESP8266MQTTClient: ....
I looked for the folder ESP8266MQTTClient and it does exist with 2 subfolders 'src' and 'examples'
subfolder 'src' looks OK containing .c .h files etc
subfolder 'examples' has nothing except a further subfolder 'MQTTClient' which contains no files
I also have a laptop on which I have no problems with finding ESP boards BUT when I look for the same \Documents\Arduino\Libraries\ESP8266MQTTClient: .... the folder ESP8266MQTTClient does not exist
Baffling .... Further help / comments would be appreciated
Click on the black console window at the bottom of the Arduino IDE window.
Press Ctrl + A. This will select all the text in the console window.
Press Ctrl + C. This will copy the selected text to the clipboard.
In a reply here on the forum, click the </> button on the toolbar. This will cause the output you post to be put inside code tags so that the forum doesn't interpret any of it as markup and corrupt it.
Press Ctrl + V. This will paste the contents of the clipboard inside the code tags.
Click "Reply".
Hopefully that will give some useful information we can use to help you.
rbright:
Invalid library found in C:\Users\Ray Bright\Documents\Arduino\Libraries\ESP8266MQTTClient:
That is a completely unrelated warning that has nothing to do with the boards issue. Let's focus on the more important boards issue for now. After that's been resolved, I can help you to get rid of the invalid library warning.
FIXED
I found just uninstalling & reinstalling did not fix the problem BUT by uninstalling with the free version of Revo Uninstaller did a more comprehensive uninstall including registry options so the reinstallation was from a fresh pallet.