"There was an error starting Zotero"

Becbee2

All of a sudden I can't open Zotero. I have restarted my computer and reinstalled Zotero. The problem is for Zotero Standalone which is what I normally use, and Zotero for Firefox, which I installed following troublshooting instructions to previous users with similar issues. Zotero is installed on a local, not network, drive but I tried moving it to a different local drive, with no success.

I can't copy/paste the error log I get when I follow the debug instructions because the "There was an error..." dialog box opens, I can't select anything in the error console without closing this dialog and closing the dialog closes the error console. But the errors that show in the error console are:

Could not read chrome manifest '[filepath]'
formatURLPref:Couldn't get pref:app.support.baseURL
formatURLPref:Couldn't get pref:app.support.baseURL
Exception..."Component returned failure code 0x80630002
(NS-ERROR_STORAGE_IOERR) [moz]StoreageService.openDatabase]" nsresult:
"0x8063000002 (NS-ERROR_STORAGE_IOERR)"location: "JS frame ::
chrome://zotero/content/xpcom/db.js::
Zotero.DBConnection.prototype._getDBConnection::line 1119" data:no]
bad script XDR magic number
bad script XDR magic number
1476706780228 Toolkit.Telemetry ERROR
TelemetryStorage::loadAbortedSessionPing - error removing ping: PingReadError
JS Stack trace: PingReadError@TelemetryStorage.jsm:80:15 <
TelemetryStorageImp.loadPingFile<@TelemetryStorage.jsm:1440.13

Can anyone help me get up and running again?

adamsmith

you've tried restarting your computer? And the location of the Zotero database isn't/wasn't in an otherwise synced folder (e.g. in a Dropbox folder)?

Becbee2

Yes, I have restarted my computer, and no, Zotero is on my local c drive.

adamsmith

As you have probably seen the standard answer to this is Dan's here:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/195472/#Comment_195472

apart from the network drive, security software is the other likely culprit (at a very basic level it means that Zotero can't read from the disk, that's why we're looking for the error outside of Zotero).

Becbee2

Ok, following the instructions in the link I did find some Zotero files on a shared network drive. I moved them to the same local drive as the rest of my Zotero files. But how do I redirect where Zotero looks for these, given I can't open it?

dstillman

You can try deleting prefs.js in the Zotero profile directory, which will reset the data directory location (and your other prefs, such as your sync username). Whether that works depends on whether you were using a custom data directory before.