Hey, my Arduino IDE was working fine until yesterday, when I tried to flash my NodeMCU with Spacehunn's Deauther program. It gave me a few error messages, and I gave up. Today I tried to open the IDE again, but the program would boot until it said "Uploading Boards", and it would crash. Not even an error message from Windows telling me why. It just dissapeared. I think it's a "my computer" problem, and I've been sleuthing around my settings trying to figure something out. I'll keep it up (I have a friend who's good with this stuff), but to cover all my bases, i figured i'd look here. I uninstalled my original IDE, re-downloaded it, and re-installed it (a few times), but it's still doing it. Is there a reason my IDE would be doing this? (Without factoring my PC itself into the equation)
When you uninstall the Arduino IDE, there is a user folder that is not removed. A malformed file in that folder is likely the cause of your problem and this is why reinstalling doesn't solve the problem. The folder should be at C:\Users{username}\AppData\Local\Arduino15. Delete that folder and the IDE should be able to start. Your preferences set in File > Preferences and the hardware packages you install via Tools > Board > Boards Manager are stored in that folder so you will need to reconfigure your preferences and re-install any hardware packages you had previously installed after doing this.
Thanks, I got to the users part, opened my user, and couldn't find my appdata anywhere. Any idea where it would be?
Here are some links to some screenshots:
Windows hides that folder by default. In Windows Explorer, you need to check View > Hidden Items.