Helios Crash on start, fix!

[Snacko]

I just wanted to document this solution because Helios has a habit of "randomly" starting to crash. I've had this a few times over the last years and it was always very difficult to get working again.

:joystick: :joystick:

 

Helios was working flawlessly until yesterday. The bam! It started to crash on startup. Both the Control Center, and the Editor crashed before they even loaded. The event viewer said it was an xml parse error. I uninstalled Helios and reinstalled only to get the same error. It uses the 2.0 Runtime so I tried reinstalling that, but could not. Win said it was already installed. Ran a repair on 2.0 and it found nothing to repair. Reinstalled DirectX, but no joy.

 

Finally, I figured out (after a bit of prayer) that the ..\My Documents\Helios\HeliosSettings.xml file was full of null.null.null.null.null.null.null.null.null.null.null.null.

Delete the file and let Helios create a new one. And that FIXED it!! Helios works fine again.

 

I think what happened was that after a Windows BSOD that I got upon shutting down Windows, that file was not written correctly and filled with nulls. That's why I started getting Helios Crashing on Startup with some XML Error.

 

This file is not in the Helios 'install' folder. So, uninstalling and reinstalling Helios will not fix this problem! And this file is in the folder with all of your Helios profiles. So, you don't really want to wipe them out too and loose all that setup work! So, that's why it was so hard to fix..

[Capt Zeen]

Good one!

i am going to put the fix on the FAQ on my site.

[bummie89]

Just downloaded the latest version of Helios and the control center crashes on startup. Profile editor works just fine. Nothing wrong with the xml file as stated above although I deleted it anyway and let it re-generate but again did not help. Control Center Crashes Immediately.

 

Using Windows 7

[caiman]

Me too

[sobe]

From Bluefin

 

If you hit the same problem that I reproduced, it is caused by Control Center trying to tell you that you need to enable the Aero Desktop. If you turn on the Aero Desktop, then I suspect that the problem will disappear. If this works for you, then I'll wait for the next release of Helios before delivering the fix.

[Snacko]

Just downloaded the latest version of Helios and the control center crashes on startup. Profile editor works just fine. Nothing wrong with the xml file as stated above although I deleted it anyway and let it re-generate but again did not help. Control Center Crashes Immediately.

 

Using Windows 7

 

You are probably better off posting problems in one of the official Helios threads. Like this one?

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=221100&page=4

 

I was getting CTD a while back. It turned out to be my BitDefender AV/Firewall. It had a Ransomware feature that was blocking Helios.

 

Try running it in Admin mode?

 

Other than that, post in those other threads to get more help.. :thumbup: