Android Studio fails to load the Visual Layout Editor

Question

I've been on google and android support forums for more than 8 hours now with no luck. My Android studio was working fine 2 days ago and last night when I wanted to continue my project, I got this error :

    Render error
    ActiveTool: com.intellij.designer.designSurface.tools.SelectionTool@7797899
    SDK: Android 4.4.2 - API 19
    java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/kxml2/io/KXmlParser
    at com.android.ide.common.resources.IdResourceParser.parse(IdResourceParser.java:75)
at com.android.ide.common.resources.IdGeneratingResourceFile.parseFileForIds(IdGeneratingResourceFile.java:150)
at com.android.ide.common.resources.IdGeneratingResourceFile.load(IdGeneratingResourceFile.java:72)
at com.android.ide.common.resources.ResourceFolder.getFile(ResourceFolder.java:286)
at com.android.ide.common.resources.ResourceFolder.processFile(ResourceFolder.java:74)
at org.jetbrains.android.sdk.FrameworkResourceLoader$IdeFrameworkResources.ensureInitialized(FrameworkResourceLoader.java:124)
at org.jetbrains.android.sdk.FrameworkResourceLoader.loadPlatformResources(FrameworkResourceLoader.java:60)
at org.jetbrains.android.sdk.FrameworkResourceLoader.load(FrameworkResourceLoader.java:54)
at org.jetbrains.android.sdk.AndroidTargetData.getFrameworkResources(AndroidTargetData.java:207)
at com.android.tools.idea.configurations.ResourceResolverCache.getFrameworkResources(ResourceResolverCache.java:248)
at com.android.tools.idea.configurations.ResourceResolverCache.getFrameworkResources(ResourceResolverCache.java:214)
at com.android.tools.idea.configurations.ResourceResolverCache.getResourceResolver(ResourceResolverCache.java:129)
at com.android.tools.idea.configurations.Configuration.getResourceResolver(Configuration.java:1137)
at com.android.tools.idea.rendering.RenderService.getResourceResolver(RenderService.java:276)
at com.android.tools.idea.rendering.RenderService.createRenderSession(RenderService.java:469)
at com.android.tools.idea.rendering.RenderService.render(RenderService.java:691)
at com.intellij.android.designer.designSurface.AndroidDesignerEditorPanel$6.run(AndroidDesignerEditorPanel.java:483)
at com.intellij.util.ui.update.MergingUpdateQueue.execute(MergingUpdateQueue.java:320)
at com.intellij.util.ui.update.MergingUpdateQueue.execute(MergingUpdateQueue.java:310)
at com.intellij.util.ui.update.MergingUpdateQueue$2.run(MergingUpdateQueue.java:254)
at com.intellij.util.ui.update.MergingUpdateQueue.flush(MergingUpdateQueue.java:269)
at com.intellij.util.ui.update.MergingUpdateQueue.flush(MergingUpdateQueue.java:227)
at com.intellij.util.ui.update.MergingUpdateQueue.run(MergingUpdateQueue.java:217)
at com.intellij.util.concurrency.QueueProcessor.runSafely(QueueProcessor.java:238)
at com.intellij.util.Alarm$Request$1.run(Alarm.java:327)
at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:471)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:262)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:744)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.kxml2.io.KXmlParser          PluginClassLoader[org.jetbrains.android, 10.0]
at com.intellij.ide.plugins.cl.PluginClassLoader.loadClass(PluginClassLoader.java:68)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:358)
... 30 more

Anyone got some thoughts on this? Oh yeah, The first time I used android studio, it was online, then it work, then offline, still worked and now it doesn't work again.

My setup :

Windows 8.1 pro 64-bit Java JDK 1.7 64-bit

I tired changing the API level, but still no results. Here is a screenshot :

http://snag.gy/bSr7y.jpg

If there is already a thread on this, please point me to it and I'll remove this one. I did a quick search on StackOverflow and couldn't see anything.

Thanks in advance

Solution :

Turns out, my JDK was corrupt and it didn't fully remove the installation when uninstalled.

I finally got it fixed. Here is what I did :

First, I uninstalled Java JDK1.7 and removed all it's left over files. Then I downloaded and installed JDK1.8 and it worked.

I had an error where the Studio said it couldn't detect JDK, so I only added an JAVA_HOME environment variable which points to my new JDK and it's all working fine now. Thanks everyone for the help and suggestions. I hope this can help someone in the future.

Answer 1

I dont know what the exact problem was ... But NoClassDefFoundError is kind of hard ... Anyway try this post

3 ways to solve java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError in Java

Check the XmlParser class (try commenting any class calls) above link describes how this error gets generated