Cannot use windows gnucash - file save crashes app

[Geert Janssens]

On Wednesday 30 September 2015 21:23:53 Michael Jasiak wrote:
> Hi Gnucash list -
> 
>    On my first attempt at running gnucash for windows:
> 
> 1) Every attempt to save hangs - as in, putting in a file name causes
> gnucash to hang indefinitely until I hit the red X and windows asks if
> I want to send a crash report.  Setting up a new account also hangs
> when it asks me to save.  I think it's trying to close some old
> account file that doesn't exist, but I can't be sure - I tried to
> change my paths at first install to not use my C:\ (for SSD space
> limit reasons), and everything's gone wrong since.
> 

Hi Michael,

As Maf already pointed out, this issue has been reported earlier. It's a confirmed bug in gnucash 
2.6.8 [1].

> 2) Windows install data persists even when the app is uninstalled - I
> mean *really* persists.

That's not quite correct. What persists is your user preferences. Those are not created at install 
time, these are set based on your preference choices while running gnucash. The stored file 
paths are part of this. 

> I know this because even after an uninstall
> gnucash would still find my D:\  file paths - removing .gnucash and
> anything in AppData didn't help; I had to finally resort to
> gratuitously removing the gnucash entries I found in the registry. 
> Even then, I still don't get the welcome splash screen after cleaning
> those entries - the "default" save directory is restored
> ("Documents") but gnucash still doesn't give me the "Welcome - try A?
> B? C?" screen.

What do you mean exactly with the "Welcome - try A? B? C?" screen ?

<snip>

> Per #2 - If there's a way to remove all data on uninstall that would
> be great - or a doc that describes how.  I've read quite a bit of
> incredible documentation while looking for this (which is great!) but
> I can't find anything about what ended up installed where.  Thinking
> I may have done something wrong at install is reinforced terribly
> when I remove software only to find it hung onto my last known
> settings.
> 
As most applications I'm aware of GnuCash doesn't provide a way to remove all user 
preferences/data on uninstall.

As far as I understand, uninstallers are not supposed to delete user data, be it preferences, 
most recently used file lists or actual data. Some people would be quite upset if that happened.

However if you manually removed the registry entries and the .gnucash directory in your user's 
home directory, you have removed all preferences and metadata the current version of 
gnucash keeps. Older versions also had some .gconf and .gconfd directories in the user's home 
directory (for gnucash versions before 2.6.0) and optionally a directory for online banking 
(.aqbanking I believe). If you have removed all of those there are no traces left of gnucash on 
your system other than your data file.

Note that removing the .gnucash directory will also remove your saved report configurations if 
you had any.

Regards,

Geert

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=755920