Design Studio 1.6 crashed on startup

Design Studio 1.6 crashed on startup problem description:

After starting an old installation of Crystal reports unsuccessfully I tried to open the Design Studio 1.6 SP06, which was working correctly. Suddenly I was not able to open it. Design Studio 1.6 crashed on startup before even getting to the system logon.

I am writing this post, because it may help someone to solve the problem.

In the folder C:\Users\My_userid\Analysis-config\config I found a log file during the start of the design studio with following error:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.ds 1 0 2018-05-02 10:17:57.187
!MESSAGE Could not bind a reference of component OSGIPluginFactoryResolver. The reference is: Reference[name = pluginfactory, interface = com.crystaldecisions.sdk.occa.pluginmgr.IPluginFactory, policy = dynamic, cardinality = 0..n, target = null, bind = addPluginFactory, unbind = removePluginFactory]

This log file was deleted after the crash, so I have opened it just during the trial to open the program.

I restarted several times and as this was not helping, I uninstalled the Crystal reports, uninstalled the Design Studio and re-installed the Design Studio again.

After uninstalling Design Studio and before re-installing it again I did following steps found as advice for similar problems:

1)  Deleted any remaining Analysis folders in the user directory such as:

C:\Users\<user>\Analysis-config and C:\Users\<user>\Analysis-workspace

You can rename the folders to have them as copy.

2)  Checked that the Design Studio program folder has been completely deleted:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\Design Studio

This was solving my problem and I was able to open again the Design studio applications.

Preferred Startup Mode

After re-installation you may need to configure again some settings.  By default the installation of Design Studio 1.6 is configured to local mode. You can change this from the menu>> Tools>>Preferences>>Application Design>>General>>Preferred Startup Mode:

After selecting the mode you need to restart the Design Studio.

Researching the web I found that similar problems can be caused not only by other Business Object product installation, but also when you have errors in a particular web application or by update to a newer service pack. The trick here is always to clear the folders config, workspace and program folder before re-installation.

And if you are already tired from Design Studio 1.6, you can migrate to SAP Lumira – the successor of Design studio.