Hi, when opening dt it takes about an hour to start. It seems to be stuck at the process “synchronising local copies” and when finally open, it crashes after two minutes again.
It worked just fine two days ago and I haven’t changed settings in dt or on my laptop (Windows 11).
I tried reinstalling dt (vers. 5.2.1) several times, but the problem unfortunately still remains.
Any idea on how to fix this would be very much appreciated!
Bob
You could run from the command line with the -d all option
darktable -d all
and share the resulting logs, in case it gives any hints where the problem is. I don’t use Windows but I believe Windows log files are normally created here: %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Darktable\darktable-log.txt
You can see some possibly useful notes here: faq | darktable
Thx! Unfortunately no tech person here. 
The more information you give, the more help you are likely to get.
Do you know how to open a command window?
I think you would then type "C:\Program Files\darktable\bin\darktable" -d all
The output, or possibly the last few lines output, could then be copied here, or might give you a clue.
Right, okay, I’ll try.
Yes I know how to open a command window, but if I don’t know the exact command to type in I am lost again. For example your suggestion, should it work with “…” or without and when do I type the -d all?
Well, I am not using windows, so can’t test it, but try the command exactly as given, all on one line.
Okay, the command started dt (no further info in the command window), but it’s stuck again at the same point as mentioned above and we’d have to wait an hour till it would be fully open.
When starting darktable from a command prompt run this:
"C:\Program Files\darktable\bin\darktable" -d all
The debug output will not appear in the terminal. It goes to a log file instead so you’ll need to retrieve that file, which is located at:
C:\Users\<your account name here>\Documents\Darktable
The file is named darktable-log.txt.
If there’s already a file by that name I recommend renaming it before launching darktable, so a new one will be created with only this session’s output.
On my system a single launch creates a roughly half-megabyte file of more than 2,800 lines. I’m not sure of the policy here (so someone will need to chime in) but rather than posting that many lines to a message you might (?) want to create a compressed (zip) file of it first. To do that, I think there’s an option on the context menu, so right-click the file and look for something like “create compressed file”. You can then attach that file to a message.
Will I have to wait till dt is fully launched till I can have a look at this log-txt-file?
Yes. The file isn’t written to disk until it’s done.
Oh okay will wait and will have to come back to this problem tomorrow. Thanks a lot David and Len already for your help today!
Maybe -d all is a tad too much. What will we do with a few GB of logs generated in an hour? I’d start with -d common, and only resort to -d all if that does not help.
Thank you! Will try this tomorrow.
What do common and all refer to in this command though?
The types and amount of debugging information logged.
The log will help troubleshoot this. It sounds like you tried to use the feature of creating local copies of the files. Are your files in a network drive or local?
Reinstalling dt won’t help much. The database and configuration remains intact. Let’s see what the log shows, otherwise the nuclear option is to start with a new configuration folder.