IntelliJ Will Not Launch After Update

Question

Windows also cannot uninstall it, so that I can reinstall it. I have not used intellij for almost a year. I updated Intellij the other day to start using it again. When I try to launch after the update I get this error:

Internal error. Please refer to https://jb.gg/ide/critical-startup-errors

java.lang.RuntimeException: Could not find installation home path. Please make sure bin/idea.properties is present in the installation directory.
    at com.intellij.openapi.application.PathManager.getHomePath(PathManager.java:94)
    at com.intellij.openapi.application.PathManager.loadProperties(PathManager.java:519)
    at com.intellij.idea.Main.bootstrap(Main.java:94)
    at com.intellij.idea.Main.main(Main.java:84)

-----
Your JRE: 11.0.11+9-b1504.13 amd64 (JetBrains s.r.o.)
C:\Program Files\JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 2018.3.4\jbr

Answer 1

According to the link the error is referencing it could be one of many things.

I would try and Delete the IDE system path (idea.system.path) as that is the easiest done from the list or I would straight up try and re-install the IDE as is suggested as that will probably take care of most of the issues existing.

I would also probably backup and delete the settings directory before re-installing (idea.config.path) and try again. It says that you can do this after re-installing as well but there could be an error in the settings directory that messes with the startup, meaning that the error could be resolved without you having to re-install.

You mentioned that you cannot uninstall or re-install which seems to be an issue with windows itself. If you are running this in an older system I think that re-installing windows might be your only solution (I used to have a similar issue with visual studio community). You could also try to mess around with the registry but if you are not sure what you are doing there I would simply re-install since it is way simpler