Eclipse wont start!

Uggg! Eclipse won't start because I shut the machine down without closing it because it was beer o'clock. My own stupid fault but eclipse is a fickle bit of software at the best of times. It's a very powerful tool for web developers however.

In my case this is because the metadata files in my workspace got corrupted. Now there are sveral things you can do short of a new install.

Start with -clean option
Start eclipse from the command line with -clean option to clear out the cache and force Eclipse to reset everything. This works half the time. You can start with this flag every time but it's a bit slower
On windows it's like this: eclipse.exe -clean
and on linux you just type: eclipse -clean on your CLI.

If this didn't work then you're going to have to use create a new workspace. Rename the old one to something and start Eclipse. Hopefully the friggen thing should run. Then you need to import your old workspaces into your new workspace through File>Import>Existing Projects into Workspace.

You might be able to import your preferences if you're lucky. See: Go to File>Import>Preferences

Always use Version Control!
Hopefully you have been using a Version Control System like Subversion or CVS. The CVS plugin comes standard with Eclipse but for SVN you need to get Subclipse. If are using Version Control then you can just check out your files and start again. You'll only lose your prefs. If you are not using Version Control Software then you're clearly nuts.

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