I thought I ask this question before taking the sledge hammer approach of deleting all darktable files from my Windows 11 computer and then doing a fresh install.
My problem is that when I start DT I have numerous windows popping up briefly that are windows cmd prompts. This is just some sort of mess I have created and I want to just have DT start up fast without this crap that I have caused. I tried deleting the darktablerc file, but that did not resolve the problem. I am happy to lose my database and everything saved about DT if needed and just start with a fresh install. But I thought this might be a sledgehammer when a simple fix may be possible. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Go to your %LOCALAPPDATA%\darktable\ folder and rename it temporarily. Then start the program and if it works, you can copy the important files, like darktablerc and data.db etc. back to your new folder, one by one.
If this does not work, you need a better consultant, sorry. Be well!
Sounds like the Lua script manager running git to update the modules. At least I only saw such behaviour when I enabled Lua to answer some questions on the forum.
If so, there’s a preference to update the scripts on starting darktable, which you can disable. Deleting all Lua-related files and directories from the config directory, and editing darktablerc to delete all Lua-specific settings (to get back the defaults) is also enough to clean it all up.
For sure, the ‘flashing windows’ are Lua plugins related. I don’t know if those come from plugins themselves starting up, or the updater running. But it’s not something to be alarmed about(and I hope not a reason to redo your Darktable install ).
@jorismak thanks for the info. I have chosen to do a new install not because of the annoying (to me) windows flashing up, but because I was not invested in the database and wanted to install a fresh copy of the latest 4.4 version for teaching my students without all my personal tweaks to the system.
Always be careful with uninstaller tools, and in this case is absolutely not needed.
The install files (in c:\program files or c:\program files (x86) by default), the local config / database in %localappdata\darktable and maybe the shader cache somewhere in the temporary files, but that’s it.
).