[R] Problem with R Installation - .RData

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2011, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> On 11-01-28 5:15 AM, Iva wrote:
>> 
>> Dear All,
>> 
>> I have Windows Vista and I want to install R. However, when I tried to 
>> start
>> it after the installation, I received the following message:
>> 
>> 'Fatal error. I cannot retrieve the saved data from .RData'. So, in the
>> moment R does not work.
>> 
>> Do you have any idea how to cope with this problem?
>
> Find the bad .RData file and move it out of the way.  The rules R uses to 
> find it are somewhat involved; you might find it easiest just to use Windows 
> utilities to find it.  But here are the rules to find the home directory 
> where .RData would be found.
>
> "The home directory is set as follows: If environment variable R_USER is set, 
> its value is used. Otherwise if environment variable HOME is set, its value 
> is used. After those two user-controllable settings, R tries to find 
> system-defined home directories. It first tries to use the Windows "personal" 
> directory (typically C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents on 
> Windows XP and C:\Users\username\Documents on Vista/Windows 7). If that 
> fails, if both environment variables HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH are set (and they 
> normally are), the value is ${HOMEDRIVE}${HOMEPATH}. If all of these fail, 
> the current working directory is used."

Here's a simpler way.

1) Start R with --vanilla (add it to the end of the target of a 
shortcut).

2) Type in R

Sys.getenv("R_USER")

3) file.rename(file.path(Sys.getenv("R_USER"), ".RData"),
                file.path(Sys.getenv("R_USER"), "RData_bad")

4) remove --vanilla and restart R.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595