Ongoing RStudio startup issues

RStudio IDE
, ,
1

Hi, I have been battling the issue below for a few days - whenever I try to activate a project RStudio crashes with the following issue, and then throws this error on startup (RStudio will not start after that). I have deleted AppData (local and roaming), deleted all .Rproj.user folders in all my projects, reinstalled RStudio and R multiple times, and manually created rstudio-prefs.json to not restore on startup.

There is no user on my system called jenkins. Any suggestions for addressing this would be very gratefully received.

R Session Startup Failure Report

RStudio Version

RStudio 2026.04.0+526 "Globemaster Allium " (57f8932a, 2026-04-18) for windows

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) RStudio/2026.04.0+526 Chrome/142.0.7444.265 Electron/39.8.7 Safari/537.36

Error message

[No error available]

Process Output

The R session exited with code 3221225477.

Error output:

[No errors emitted]

Standard output:

[No output emitted]

Logs

C:/Users/MyUserName/AppData/Local/RStudio/log/rsession-MyUserName.log

2026-05-17T13:49:15.832724Z [rsession-MyUserName] ERROR system error 3 (The system cannot find the path specified) [path: C:/Users/MyUserName/.Rproj.user/783B7564/scratch-path]; OCCURRED AT auto __cdecl rstudio::core::FilePath::openForRead::<lambda_1>::operator ()(void) const src/cpp/shared_core/FilePath.cpp:1611; LOGGED FROM: class rstudio::core::json::Object __cdecl rstudio::session::projects::`anonymous-namespace'::projectConfigJson(const struct rstudio::core::r_util::RProjectConfig &) C:\Users\jenkins\workspace\ide-os-windows\rel-globemaster-allium\src\cpp\session\projects\SessionProjects.cpp:522
2026-05-17T13:51:04.181571Z [rsession-MyUserName] ERROR system error 3 (The system cannot find the path specified) [path: C:/Users/MyUserName/local_dev/CIU-0057-los-analytics/.Rproj.user/783B7564/scratch-path]; OCCURRED AT auto __cdecl rstudio::core::FilePath::openForRead::<lambda_1>::operator ()(void) const src/cpp/shared_core/FilePath.cpp:1611; LOGGED FROM: class rstudio::core::FilePath __cdecl rstudio::session::projects::`anonymous-namespace'::computeUserDir(const class rstudio::core::FilePath &,const struct rstudio::core::r_util::RProjectConfig &) C:\Users\jenkins\workspace\ide-os-windows\rel-globemaster-allium\src\cpp\session\projects\SessionProjectContext.cpp:153
2026-05-17T13:51:04.181571Z [rsession-MyUserName] ERROR system error 3 (The system cannot find the path specified) [path: C:/Users/MyUserName/local_dev/CIU-0057-los-analytics/.Rproj.user/783B7564/scratch-path]; OCCURRED AT auto __cdecl rstudio::core::FilePath::openForRead::<lambda_1>::operator ()(void) const src/cpp/shared_core/FilePath.cpp:1611; LOGGED FROM: class rstudio::core::FilePath __cdecl rstudio::session::projects::`anonymous-namespace'::computeUserDir(const class rstudio::core::FilePath &,const struct rstudio::core::r_util::RProjectConfig &) C:\Users\jenkins\workspace\ide-os-windows\rel-globemaster-allium\src\cpp\session\projects\SessionProjectContext.cpp:153
1 Like
2

As a first guess try Resetting RStudio Desktop's State
https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/200534577-Resetting-RStudio-Desktop-s-State

1 Like
3

Thanks so much for replying to my post, I removed the two RStudio folders (renamed) - the roaming and the local. RStudio starts up and restarts fine, and I can change the R version to the most recent installed.

However, as soon as I try to create a new project, RStudio crashes, and then RStudio will not load, even when I restart. I modified rstudio-prefs.conf with the following:

{
"restore_last_project": false,
"save_workspace": "never",
"initial_working_directory": "~",
"pdf_previewer": "none",
"windows_terminal_shell": "win-git-bash"
}

but this does not make Rstudio start up properly - I get basically the same error in the first post.

1 Like
4

Beats me,particularly as I have I have not used Windows in 15+ years and never used { rstudio.prefs}. In fact, this is the first time I have heard of it.

What happens if you do not load { rstudio.prefs} and just try setting preferences manually?
I am just thinking that you should strip everything down to as bare-bones an installation as possible.

1 Like
5

Yes, no joy there unfortunately.

I googled this again, and this thread comes up at the top - looks like a very niche issue!

1 Like
6

I did the same and you were first up.

I forgot to ask: Is R itself working okay either in RStudio outside of a project or in a terminal?

In desperation you might want to see what happens if you try Positron.

I just realised I missed a key point: Who is Jenkins?

It might be worthwhile drafting a new issue inquiring about a rogue user on your system. If Jenkins should not exist than maybe that is the source of the problem but it is beyond my skill level to troubleshoot that, even worse in Windows.

Edit: If you have a rogue user, is it a Windows problem not an R or RStudio problem?

1 Like