Yesterday I was working on an application using Lazarus 2.0.20/fpc 3.2.0 on a Windows 10 notebook.
Suddenly Win10 decided to crash with a memory fault and restarted itself.

But now Lazarus no longer works and when I inspected the config dir I found that two files had been hosed (filled with NUL characters):

environmentoptions.xml
inputhistory.xml

All other files seem to be OK, so now I wonder what I can do to repair my Lazarus installation?

Unlike on Linux this installation is created using the official windows installer for Lazarus 2.0.10 so I do not really know how the two files were created. On Linux I always install from SVN sources using a script I created years ago and then I can backtrack there...

I tried to use files from my 2.0.8 installation after editing the items pointing to locations in the 2.0.8 tree to instead point to 2.0.10, but that was not successful.

Grateful for any suggestions on how to fix this.

(I do not really want to start over from scratch after spending time installing extra packages and customizations and the like).

The packages should be OK. But as the names indicate, your input history is lost, and the environment options (essentially what you entered in tools - options) also.

Just delete those 2 files.

Michael.

Thanks Michael,
after doing that Lazarus starts up with the after-installation-dialog where one can check the important paths etc.
Then I got to a pristine Lazarus but with my editor configurations intact and the installed packages still there.
I could successfully build my project and run the resulting exe. My custom desktop was gone so I re-created it and saved it.

I guess the custom desktops are saved in environmentoptions.xml...

Lesson learned:
---------------
This is the second time Windows 10 crashed and trashed the configuration fles, last time when using Lazarus 2.0.8.

From now on I will make a backup copy of all of the files in the

config dir into a zipfile so I can resurrect a broken file after a crash.

Rant:
-----
This thing with Windows crashing never happened in the many years I used Windows 7, but in Dec 2019 I had to finally move to a new notebook and of course now Win 7 is no longer available so I have Win 10...

And that has caused all kinds of problems like the crashes I discuss here but also a self-initiated reboot at irregular times purportedly in order to "upgrade" the system....
And I have found no way to stop it from happening.

Win10 also triggers a start of a system backup at non-scheduled times for unknown reasons. I have a scedule set for a backup to run on the night between Friday and Saturday every week, but now it can start any day at any time....
Soo strange.
When writing this I realized that I could of course have used the last backup to get my original config files back, but I did not think as far....

I wish I could bring back Windows 7....

Of course on Linux this is not an issue at all, but if the target programs are supposed to run on Windows I have no choice here.

Am 29.10.20 um 10:51 schrieb Bo Berglund via lazaru

 What about Win 7 + Lazarus in a VirtualBox?

I use Lazarus 2.0.10 for Windows installed over Wine in GNU/Linux and it works ok,

even for some projects I share the same source tree, and I'm able to compile

for the two platforms.

I do this too, using VirtualBox shared folders.

The physical machine is a Windows 8 with the source directory, where I can compile with Lazarus for Windows.

I run an Ubuntu vm  using Virtual Box, with shared folders pointing to my source directory. The Lazarus on Ubuntu can compile directly in this directory.
I just have a small problem, I need to add LCLBase to the requirements when I compile in Linux.
May be this this is because I don't have the same versions of Lazarus in Windows and Ubuntu.
A few years ago, I had go back to an older version of Lazarus on windows because I got curious effects with the last ones. My source code produce a dll used by a program written in Genero (www.4js.com).

On Windows, some threads in Genero get a high cpu activity when then dll is compiled with recent Lazarus. The probleme does not occur with Ubuntu. I haven't had time yet to find exactly why.

John Landmesser wrote

 What about Win 7 + Lazarus in a VirtualBox?

I do have my old laptop virtualized with VMWare Workstation 15 and can run it but it is a dual layer I only use because of some programs that can no longer be installed in Windows 10.

And it would not solve the problem of Windows 10 suddenly just rebooting overnight or plain crashing. That would be equally detrimental to a virtual environment as running on the Win10 laptop directly.