<type>documentation</type>
<domain>install</domain>
<id>trouble-start</id>
<title>Trouble-shooting Failure to Start</title>
<date>$Date$</date>
<version>$Revision$</version>
<product>all</product>

If you are having trouble getting Wing to start at all, you can diagnose the problem
as follows:

**Rule out problems caused by a corrupted project file or preferences** by renaming your
`Settings Directory <ref:install/user-settings-dir>`__. If this works, you can copy
over items from the renamed directory one at a time to isolate the problem. The most
likely files to cause problems are ``default.wpr``, ``preferences``, and
``recent-projects``. Note, however, that Wing may automatically copy over files from the
settings directory for an older version of Wing. You may have to move those aside also, to
prevent reintroducing problem files.

**Check whether anti-virus or security software is blocking Wing** from starting. Some
anti-virus solutions like Constant Guard have been known to do this, without showing any
warnings or messages. On macOS, check the Security & Privacy system control panel for
messages.

**On Windows, check if the user's temporary directory is full**, which prevents Wing from
starting. In this case, the directory will contain more than 65,000 files.

**On Linux or macOS, check if the cache directory is on a remote file server**, which can
prevent Wing from starting. This happens if the ``~/.cache`` directory or the cache
directory set by the ``$XDG_CACHE_DIR`` is located on NFS or other remote file server.
In that case, Wing can't obtain a lock on the source analysis database. To use slower
dotfile locking, run Wing with the ``--use-sqlite-dotfile-locking`` command line argument.
Note that all Wing processes that use the same cache directory need to either use or not
use dotfile locking.

~~~if not WING101:
**In other cases**, refer to `Obtaining Diagnostic Output <ref:install/trouble-diagnostic>`__.
~~~

