Scrivener won't open

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

The program was working fine about 2 days ago. This is a new computer, so I’ve added quite a few other programs since then, though nothing I didn’t also have on my old computer where I was also using Scrivener. However, today I tried to open it, and… nothing. Cursor indicated it was working, but no window opened. With ctrl+alt+del I was able to find the program running in the background, but it wouldn’t open the window. I tried closing and re-opening it several times, but no dice. I tried opening my .scriv file, but with the same result. Finally, I tried uninstalling and then reinstalling Scrivener… Same result. Will not work at all.

I’ve tested my other programs, and Scrivener seems to be the only one having this issue. Any idea what’s causing it? I really can’t use it at all. All of my writing is saved in .scriv files, so I can’t even work on it in another program. I suppose I can use my old computer to compile all the files and all, but… I want to use Scrivener! I’m used to it, I love it, and there must be a way of fixing this. Please help! Thank you!

EDIT: I found the source of the problem. It was my monitor drivers. I tried uninstalling them (resetting to the Windows default drivers) and now Scrivener opens normally. But my screen looks terrible like this. All washed-out and ugly. And part of my job is to edit videos, so I really need the color to look good. I’m really not sure what to do now. Is there any way to make Scrivener work with those drivers? I don’t understand why it doesn’t. : /

2

Interesting (in an admittedly disheartening sort of way). This is the first I’ve heard of a problem like this. Which are the drivers, and what version of Windows? Have you tried running Scrivener in compatibility mode? (Right-click the Scrivener icon and choose “Properties” to get the compatibility options. Not sure if this would help, but it’s worth a try.)

3

Super strange.I have this same problem, and I’ve had my system a while now. It’s done it twice in the past couple of weeks, in fact. Last time it resolved right before I reached out to customer service, but I can’t remember if I did something or it just took for-freaking-ever to load. But I had it open this morning, rebooted when I had some unrelated issues with evil old MS Word, and now a few hours later when I tried to open Scrivener again, it’s not responding. :frowning: I know it didn’t have anything to do with my monitors last time, though.

Running it in Compatibility Mode for Windows 7 (which I’m on) didn’t help, either. :frowning:

4

I just started having this problem over the weekend. I think I’ve found the solution, but I fear it’s very specific to my personal situation. Just in case it helps someone else, though, here it is:

I had just moved from a failing Dell Inspiron to a like-new ASUS that my husband abandoned some years ago when he went over to the Mac side of the Force. I installed Scrivener, moved all my project files over, and began to use it like normal. This worked fine until the first time I rebooted the computer a few days later (I tend to hibernate rather than restart for days at a time), after which point Scrivener either simply froze (blank window, “Not Responding”) when I tried to start it up, or else never appeared to start up at all (present as a process in Task Manager but completely invisible otherwise). It did not seem to matter which project I tried to open, so the solution here reported (of deleting the project’s ui.ini file) didn’t seem to apply. I tried it anyway, to no avail.

When I searched the forum for mention of this problem, I saw a few related mentions of synching issues (as in the linked thread above), so I wondered if maybe my problem was Dropbox.

I am not a Dropbox user. I have never used Scrivener’s synching capabilities. But my husband’s old Dropbox installation kept popping up at Windows start-up. I’d immediately shut it down, but maybe-just-maybe Dropbox hung around in some active but invisible form such that Scrivener kept seeing it was available and futilely trying to synch with it?

Dropbox, by the way, is tenacious. I’d remove it from my Start menu “Startup” folder, but it would put itself right back there on reboot. I’d disable it in msconfig’s startup tab, and next time I booted up, it would have added a new, enabled item in msconfig! I went to uninstall, but it wasn’t in Control Panel’s Programs And Features! Finally I found the uninstall.exe in c:\users[my husband’s profile]\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox, and that seemed to work. I deleted every Dropbox folder I could find, just in case; there were a lot of leftovers.

Once I was sure I had successfully removed Dropbox from the system, I uninstalled Scrivener, rebooted, reinstalled Scrivener, and attempted to start it up. And it started up! I have been able to open several projects so far without trouble.

We’ll see if Scrivener continues to work after my next reboot. But for now – knock on wood – things are working again.

Again, this may be a very particular solution. I see from the forum that other people are suspecting video drivers, keyboard drivers, mcaffee, windows service packs, etc. so this may or may not be helpful to their situations.

5

Unfortunately, Dropbox must have been a red herring. I’m still having problems.

That Scrivener session I reported on during the previous post worked fine. I opened up three different projects, interacted with them, closed them again.

But when I tried to start Scrivener again later, and it tried to load the previous project, I got a blank screen with (Not Responding).

(Incidentally, where is the list of Recent Projects kept, in terms of Windows 7’s file system? I looked under c:\user[my profile]\AppData\Roaming\Scrivener and didn’t spot anything that looked likely.)

Uninstall/reinstall without reboot resulted in a blank (Not Responding) initial New Project window. So I know it’s not the individual project that was a problem - it’s something that got hung up with the entire application.

Uninstall, reboot, reinstall - that worked. Got the New Project window just fine, and used it to browse to what had been the most recent project, and it opened ok - but - and this might be a clue - I got a window that said “This project is already open in another application. Continue? Make a copy?” or something like that.

So… somehow my projects are failing to close completely, maybe? Or is it another red herring, just an artifact of having had to close Scrivener via Task Manager -> End Process after each unsuccessful attempt to launch the program?

Are there any files in the project folders that would give me a clue about this, like the way MS Office has temporary files that start with “~” while a document is open?

I’m not relishing the idea of having to uninstall, reboot, and reinstall every time I want to launch Scrivener!

(Using version 1.8.6 on Windows 7.)

6

What other software do you have running? It may be some conflict with another service or program. I’d particularly look to any security software that might be blocking components of Scrivener and preventing it loading properly–we had an issue with Kaspersky when a new version of Scrivener came out last year and didn’t have enough downloads registered for the security software to give it the OK. We also use some third-party tools like VeryDoc’s Doc2Any converts which have occasionally needed to be manually white listed in a user’s security program.

This Microsoft article explains how to use the msconfig tool to disable startup items, so you can strip down your environment to the basics, then test Scrivener. If that avoids the hang, start adding back in your usual programs in batches and testing Scrivener until you find the one causing the freezing. With luck, it will be something where you can adjust the settings to avoid the clash.

The recent projects list is stored in the registry. If you’re stuck with the project trying to auto-load and freezing, you can change the project folder’s name (when the project isn’t open) to prevent Scrivener finding it, so it will just go to the New Project window instead.

7

Hi MM,

Funny thing is, I just stripped down everything in the process of moving to this computer - everything I didn’t recognize as being an ASUS, Elan (touchpad drive) or a Microsoft thing and everything I’m not using, I uninstalled. And in some cases hunted down and deleted the registry keys for (BestBuyPC, I’m looking at you).

The only security/firewall type stuff I’m seeing installed is Microsoft Security Essentials, which was on my old Dell and caused no problems with Scrivener. There are a million USB Readers, Controllers, and Chargers that seem to be drivers from the manufacturer, and I’m not sure why they’re all necessary but I’m way about removing them.

I’m pretty familiar with msconfig - like I said, I was hunting Dropbox down in it - and right now the only thing in the Startup tab that’s enabled and that looks suspicious is Microsoft Security Client. Here’s what I’ve got:

ELAN smartpad (again, to do with the touchpad)
Microsoft Intellipoint
Microsoft Security Client
Logitech Download Assistant (I think I’m going to disable that one)
Classic Shell (was also enabled on the old computer, no problem)
ATKOSD2 (ASUS)
ATK Media (ASUS)
ATK Hotkey (ASUS)

Those last three: I’m always cautious about removing things installed by the laptop’s manufacturer, as many of them do necessary things. I’ll look into it, though.

Looking at msconfig’s Services tab, there’s a bunch of junk in there could do with being stopped, see if that helps. If you can suggest anything in particular to look for, I’m all ears.

Edit: I’m going to open up both laptops side by side and compare their msconfigs and see what the ASUS has that the Dell doesn’t. Anything that’s on the Dell should probably be considered harmless, since I never had this problem there…

I got the “a copy of this project is already open” from multiple projects since my successful uninstall-reboot-reinstall-launch (haven’t shut down Scrivener since, because I need to get some work done here!). I suspect some process isn’t shutting down correctly and there might be an easier way to force it to clean itself up other than uninstalling everything and rebooting and reinstalling. IT may be more of a band-aid than a solution, but that’s the only reason I can think that the scorched-earth method of recovering scrivener functionality is working - because it’s a brute force tool for cleaning up whatever got jammed by whatever the real culprit is.