Installing R
I was recently checking out a data analytics course that uses R as one of its tools. It recommended using RStudio. Having never used R, I was intrigued so I started at Step 1 on the RStudio Desktop – Posit download: installing R. It links to The Comprehensive R Archive Network (rstudio.com), which has a link to the Windows download page. I installed R 4.2.2 on my desktop. Unfortunately, the web page uses frames, which makes it non-trivial to get the appropriate link to share here. Installing then launching RStudio presented this dialog:
Unfortunately, nothing happens after I click OK. There is no trace of the process in Task Manager either. I download the RStudio ZIP and see if perhaps it’s an installer issue.
Bypassing the Microsoft Defender warning doesn’t result in the executable successfully starting either. Poking around on the web with a quick search for rstudio not opening hints that other folks have run into this issue, e.g. R studio not launching – RStudio IDE – RStudio Community and Rstudio can’t launch on windows 10 – RStudio IDE – RStudio Community. They have an interesting suggestion though: pressing CTRL when launching RStudio then selecting the Software rendering engine.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t address the startup failure. I try one more thing: explicitly selecting the version of R that is used by RStudio.
When this doesn’t work, I install R and RStudio on my Surface Pro and RStudio launches successfully! I wonder if I might need to build a local installation to dig deeper into this issue. I will update this post with the results of my investigation when it completes.
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