# Trial version 10 vs Version 10 Prerelease 13

When I open the new trial version (creation id 5099521; 10.0.30732.17750) I get these error messages

and only a partial view of the "About" box

I haven't run into any particular problem, except that color of 3D plots are different from version 10 prerelease 13 (but now using PlotTheme -> {"Classic", "ClassicLights"} thanks to this web site!)

Using Windows 7 64 bit professional

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Close Mathematica, then hold down Shift-Control while starting it again. Did it fix the problem? (Reference) – Szabolcs Aug 19 '14 at 2:15
I can tell you that for me the Shadow messages was due a paclet in my .Mathematica user folder. I just deleted this one. For me it was under .Mathematica/Paclets/Configuration and I used fgrep to search for FailedQ to find the problematic file. – halirutan Aug 19 '14 at 2:18
I tried to write a general answer that will be useful to more people with similar problems. I hope it will solve the problem you see as well. – Szabolcs Aug 19 '14 at 2:41

Here are three progressively more intrusive steps to troubleshoot Mathematica.

1. Hold down Shift-Control (Shift-Command on Mac) while starting Mathematica, as described here.

If this didn't fix the problem, move to the next step.

2. Evaluate SystemOpen[\$UserBaseDirectory]. This will reveal the directory where Mathematica keeps all its settings, packages, user initialization files and any downloaded curated data or package updates. Back up these files, as we're going to remove some of them.

Now close Mathematica and remove everything except the directories called Applications (where user-installed packages are kept) and Licensing (where the license file is kept). Start up Mathematica again.

If this didn't fix the problem, move to the next step.

3. Remove everything from the above directory (after backing it up, of course), uninstall Mathematica, then re-install it. This will create a clean installation and will remove all settings, including the license file. It will be necessary to re-activate it after installing.

If this still didn't fix the problem, contact Wolfram Support.

These steps are rather crude, but they are easy to follow, so they may be the quickest solution. It is always possible to pinpoint the precise problem, and only remove (or fix) files or settings that are related to it. This, however, would likely take more time and require a deeper knowledge of Mathematica. Personally I prefer to use the cruder solution and re-adjust settings manually after I have re-set them.

This is also described at How do I fix common problems by resetting Mathematica to its default configuration?.

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Ok the error messages are gone. But the peculiar About Box is still there. (Can't go to system and Benchmark). Also the first welcoming screen is only half shown. But the operation of the program seems to be working. – user44641 Aug 21 '14 at 18:41
@Szabolcs Thanks for this. In conjunction with this problem I discovered, following a Shift+Control restart, that my Mathematica had been corrupted. By chance i had a benchmark from before the restart and did another after. See the link for details. Overall the benchmark showed that I went from anti-penultimate to top-of-the-heap! Wonderful – Hugh Aug 21 at 9:06