#mapsoftware

First, I can’t believe how long it has been since I have posted anything on this blog. That is completely contradictory to what I intended to do which was post regularly. In my defense a full time job, family, and finishing a second Masters (GIS) has sucked up most of my time. I plan to continue on with this blog and have made a New Years Resolution to post at least twice this year :). 

Now, what is the title about? I am working on a pretty big project at work and have really been power using Arc Desktop 10.4.1. The software has been really stable but after leaving for home one night and returning the next morning, I was at a complete stand still when I launched Arc and instead of launching my project (or any project for that matter), I received the “Arc has crashed” splash screen...

After trying several fixes to include trying to view the dump report, I ended up having my IT guys reinstall Arc for me and much to my surprise, that didn’t work! So I wasn’t really sure what my next step was. I ended up having a casual conversation this afternoon with some of our onsite ESRI reps and one of them said, “Did you ever get that issue fixed?” I stated that I had not and they said to try something which ended up working. So, here is what I did and felt it would be useful to share.

Resetting the ArcGIS Profile

1. Assure that no instances of Arc products are open

2. Open a Windows Explorer window so that you can view the file and folder structure.

3. Assure that you can view Hidden files. This can be done in Windows 10 by selecting View from the ribbon bar, Options > View > “Show hidden files”

4. Navigate to: “C: > Users > {ProfileName} > AppData > Roaming > ESRI > Desktop 10.4 > ArcMap > Templates. Once here you will see one file called “Normal.mxt”

5. Name the “Normal.mxt” to “Normal_Old”. This will force Arc to rebuild a profile on the next launch.

6. Launch Arc Desktop again. It will open a little slower, much like the first time a fresh install of Arc is launched for the first time because it is rebuilding a new profile. The software is now fixed.