Hello.
I came from DT 3.2.1 and got a database conversion question after first start. I chose database update and since then Darktable does not start any more. Something must be crappy in the new version. 
I tried to delete the appdata local folder of darktable, but it didnât help.
What to do?
Thank you,
T70
If you have diacritic characters in the username (anything that isnât a-z 0-9) then dt3.4 canât propery use it due to windows api⌠The fix has landed in master and will be part of 3.4.1 release.
If you only have latin characters in username, then there should be a crash log available.
Just to add this, you may find the crash log here
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\darktable\darktable-log.txt
Hi,
no, I donât have diacritic characters in my username, just letters a-z.
The darktable-log.txt contains three lines:
ERROR in lualib, couldnât find a container for lua scripts installer', this should never happen ERROR in lualib, couldn't find a container for lua scripts installerâ, this should never happen
ERROR in lualib, couldnât find a container for `lua scripts installerâ, this should never happen
But this could be from the later trial with an empty local appdata folder.
T70
I had this issue after first upgrading to 3.4. on 64bit Windows 10.
Darktable would pretend to start and sometimes Iâd briefly see an outline of a window, but then it would crash and die.
I blamed myself for not selecting the option to remove the previous 3.2.1 installation, so I uninstalled Darktable and deleted the darktable folder from C:\program files (but left the appdata database folder intact).
I then reinstalled 3.4 and it updated the database. This fixed the failing to start issue.
Unfortunately for me, Darktable 3.4 has continued to infrequently crash for other reasons, but not at start up. I have tried fixing this with another clean reinstallation, this time deleting the program and database, before re-installing. One way to guarantee a crash is to copy the history stack from one file across to several others. This not only crashes the program but I have perform a system reboot before it will start again. Reasonably CPU, SSDs and 16GB RAM and 3.2.1 never crashed on me once.
@T70 I need a little more information so that I can help.
What version of windows?
Where did you get darktable from?
How were you starting darktable? From the menu, double clicking on an image, opening a raw file in gimp and gimp starting darktable?
Can you open a windows command prompt and do the following:
âC:\Program Files\darktable\bin\darktable.exeâ -d lua > crash.txt
then attach or post the results in the crash.txt file.
Thanks
Hello!
What version of windows? 20H2 19042.572
Where did you get darktable from? Github, $ sha256sum darktable-3.4.0.exe
29dee565292a4a72443874bb970663d46420f5a9ba74a5acfcb3251a48c86f7c darktable-3.4.0.exe
How were you starting darktable? From the menu, double clicking on an image, opening a raw file in gimp and gimp starting darktable? From the menu or from the Desktop with Windows shortcut.
Can you open a windows command prompt and do the following:
âC:\Program Files\darktable\bin\darktable.exeâ -d lua > crash.txt
No, it gives me an error message:
C:\Users\surf>C:\Program Files\darktable\bin\darktable.exe" -d lua > crash.txt
Der Befehl âC:\Programâ ist entweder falsch geschrieben oder
konnte nicht gefunden werden.
I tried the german version C:\Programme⌠with the same result.
I used the option to uninstall the previous version when installing 3.4.0
Hope this helps.
Thank you,
T70
Because the directory name âProgram Filesâ contains a space character, it needs to be properly quoted, so that the CMD shell treats the whole path as a single element.
Please try:
C:\Users\surf>"C:\Program Files\darktable\bin\darktable.exe" -d lua > crash.txt
Note the " right before the C:\
Oliver
Oh, ok⌠here it is:
[init] canât rename style_items to s
[init] attempt to write a readonly database
[init] database `C:\Users\surf\AppData\Local\darktable/data.dbâ couldnât be upgraded from version 4 to 8. aborting
first rename your C:\Users\surf\AppData\Local\darktable
directory to darktable.old just to check if darktable can start with defaults.
If thats ok you might replace the new generated data.db and library.db with the files from the darktable.old directory. If thats also ok, you might compare the darktablerc files to find differences âŚ
Iâm afraid it is a bit too late to âfirstâ rename the directory. The bug in Darktable was faster than me 
no matter, itâs just starting with a plain config to exclude config issues. So see âfirstâ as first step to find the issue âŚ
Since dt couldnât write to data.db it should be ok
There were issues reported caused by defender or further security concepts in win10 ⌠so this must be excluded first
Yes, it starts, but without any specific settings, of courseâŚ
I have old versions of database files like data.db-pre-3.0.0 and data.db-pre-3.0.2 and data.db-pre-3.4.0 in the old folder. Could I use them for restauration?
One thing to remark: I am logged in as a restricted Windows user, not as admin. Does that matter?
T70
Next step ist to copy back library.db and data.db-pre3.4 (rename it to data.db), darktablerc and the subdirectories. If dt start is successful then it seemed to be some security side effects that prohibited write access to the database files.
I did. Then I controlled file properties of all that files and some were write-protected by Windows! I never did that. I switched write protection off and it started ONE TIME.
In the next start it froze again 
I manually deleted two lock files, but no next start.
Is this 3.4 a buggy version?
One âfree startâ after a fresh start of Windows. The next start crashes again. No changes made in appdata folder.
And something like this in the crash.txt:
C:\Users\surf>âC:\Program Files\darktable\bin\darktable.exeâ -d lua > crash.txt
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
[dt_pthread_create] info: bumping pthreadâs stacksize from 0 to 2097152
Magick: Unable to access configuration file (delegates.mgk) [No such file or directory].
[dt_imageio_export_with_flags] mipmap allocation for unused' failed [dt_imageio_export_with_flags] mipmap allocation for unusedâ failed
[dt_imageio_export_with_flags] mipmap allocation for unused' failed [dt_imageio_export_with_flags] mipmap allocation for unusedâ failed
[dt_imageio_export_with_flags] mipmap allocation for unused' failed [dt_imageio_export_with_flags] mipmap allocation for unusedâ failed
[dt_imageio_export_with_flags] mipmap allocation for `unusedâ failed
(darktable.exe:1588): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 10:43:37.418: gtk_text_buffer_emit_insert: assertion âg_utf8_validate (text, len, NULL)â failed
To get a working DT again, I restored a backup of my appdata folder and installed DT 3.2.1 âagainâ. Then I saw that 3.2.1 had to convert the restored database, so my last version must have been 3.0.2, not 3.2.1, when I tried to install 3.4.0.
But 3.2.1 also gives me a problem message, see the attached file, and does not start a second time.
darktable_bt_K45NX0.txt (9.0 KB)
