Failure to Launch

Gary and Ellie Field

Me too.

N++ worked yesterday. It will not load today. Version 6.9.2.0 on Windows 7.

Anton Korduan

Hmpf … this is bad. I have to work with it professionally - and daily.
Searching for alternatives … Sublime looks good.

So, lets wait till tomorrow and see.

Gary and Ellie Field

I also uninstalled and tried 6.9.1 but that didn’t work. I shut my anti-virus program off. That didn’t help.

Adam Thorpe

@Adam-Thorpe
Well I didn’t delete everything. Uninstall leaves files under …\Program Files. So I did the same again and also removed everything from the install directory. Now it works again. No plugins or custom language coloring, just a bare notepad++

So where exactly does notepad++ store the custom language definitions and can I transfer that file to my laptop and get the notepad++ on my laptop to see the same language definitions?

Adam Thorpe

Aaarrgh! So now I have tried to re-install the Explorer plug-in and it instantly died again. So there seems to be an explorer incompatibility here. Also now it won;t run as Administrator either

Nadeem Hosenbokus

Had exactly the same problem. In desperation I tried to use Atom and it was horrendous - I’m too used to my keyboard shortcuts and easy column editing. Anyway, I got NPP working again by disabling the Light Explorer plugin. I then tried to use the Explorer plugin (installed via the plugin manager) and NPP wouldn’t open again. Disabling the Explorer plugin solved the problem so it looks like I have NPP without any kind of file list which is a pain. NppFTP and TextFX plugins work so I’m thinking that it might be a Windows update that is preventing file listing or something along those lines. I’m running NPP as Administrator on Windows 7 64-bit.

Anton Korduan

Ah! Interesting.
Found this accordingly:
http://www.ghacks.net/2011/11/07/notepad-not-starting-up-try-disabling-plugins/

Florentino Gracia

I had the same problem. It seems it is a compatibility problem with the last dropbox version.

In my case, i uninstalled dropbox and explorer plugin worked again.

Anton Korduan

Sounds interesting, Florentino. I’ve dropbox installed too.
Just disabling it seems not to be enough (“exit dropbox”) even the process in taskmanager is gone, n++ wont start.

Hm … dont’ want to deinstall dropbox, its necessary for my Cloud-Backup.
Testing Sublime now.

Anton Korduan

By the way: Nadeem, how can I disable the Explorer plugin?
Just moving the explorer.dll seems not to be enough.
How do you start the PluginManager without starting N++?

Nadeem Hosenbokus

Anton - I just need to move the .dll file into the “disabled” folder. However that didn’t work the first time around for me either. I had to do a complete uninstall, delete the %appdata%/notepad++ folder and remove all configuration files (including the ones stored by Dropbox/GoogleDrive/etc if you’ve set a cloud backup) then do a fresh, clean install.

Anton Korduan

Uff … okay, thanx Nadeem! Seems a lot of work …
I will try this later.

Now I explore Sublime - its interesting.
But the FTP-Plugins are not so well, seems to me. There is no permanent window to browse.

Gary and Ellie Field

Removing Dropbox fixed the problem with NPP. Unfortunately, I need Dropbox more than NPP. I hope this gets fixed soon. Like other people have written, I need Dropbox.

Jeff Cohan

@Florentino-Gracia Thank you, sir! Uninstalling dropbox (which showed an update date of 8/19/2016) solved it for me, too.

Bruce Riggins

Renaming the Program Files (x86)/Notepad++/plugins/Explorer.dll to something like Explorer.dll.old will allow NPP to invoke again. I emailed the Dropbox technical folks - they may or may not be aware that their latest update screws with NPP.

Claudia Frank

Jfyi -to start npp without any plugins loaded (they don’t get deleted/renamed etc… just ignored) use the -noPlugin switch.
See ? menu -> Command line arguments.

Cheers
Claudia

Joris de Ruiter

---------------- FIX ----------------

I just found the problem of Dropbox. The problem is in the Shell Explorer DLL of Dropbox (that takes care of things like the sync icons in Windows Explorer in the Dropbox directory).

You can still use Dropbox AND Notepad++ using the following method:

Download ShellExView from NirSoft. Make sure you download the 32-bit version of ShellExView, because Notepad++ uses the 32-bit DLL’s of Dropbox.
Start ShellExView and sort the list by Description.
Select all the items from Dropbox
Disable all the selected items by pressing F7, or right-click->Disable selected items, or click the red-dot-icon in the upper toolbar.
Explorer.exe already loaded all these DLL’s, so restart explorer.exe with the Taskmanager, or just simply log out in Windows and login again.
Now Notepad++ should start, with any explorer plugin’s enabled and with Dropbox installed.

Possibly this fix will be temporary, because Dropbox can update the DLL and I don’t know what happens with the disabled items. But of course you can just run ShellExView again to fix this.

I encountered the problem using the LightEplorer plugin and the WindowManager plugin in Notepad++. Now it all works again.

Anton Korduan

Thanx, Joris. Hope, there will be a solution from the NPP-Developer(s) soon.

Jerod Johnson

Just wanted to confirm that uninstalling Dropbox resolved the issue for me as well.

Roy Reed

Notepad++ will only run for me on Win7 in admin mode unless I delete (or rename) plugins\Explorer.dll. I use Dropbox too often to uninstall it. Hopefully either the Explorer plugin or Dropbox will get an update to overcome this glitch.