Illustrator 10, Layer Palette missing - requires re-install??

[briancote@adobeforums.com]

I'm running illustrator 10 in windows xp, and all of a sudden the layers palette goes missing. Hitting F7 does nothing, going through "/window/layers" won't even allow the little checkmark to show. All other palettes work fine.
The only way to get it back is to completely un-install and re-install illustrator (modify/repair doesn't even fix it).
Can someone please tell me there's a simple fix i'm overlooking, because this is getting to be quite time consuming.

Thanx a million,

[LenHewitt@adobeforums.com]

Try deleting the aiprefs file.

Details in the FAQ at the top of this forum's Topic List

[briancote@adobeforums.com]

Thanx, it worked like a charm. I guess the only question is, why does it do that to begin with.

[B. Philippus]

brian:

Because the aiprefs gets written to every time you shut down Illustrator, it's apparently very likely to corrupt at some point. Despite its drawbacks (the biggest being my "recently used files" list reflects the situation when I locked aiprefs) I made my aiprefs file read-only after setting things up the way I like them. Now, if I change stuff around while using Illustrator, it pops right back next time I open the prog, and I never see corruption anymore. And I can't remember ever losing a palette.

Bert

[briancote@adobeforums.com]

Bert, making the aiprefs file read only is brilliant, i'm off to do that now. Thanx.

~brian

[B. Philippus]

brian:

If you can live with the drawbacks, it is great. Run a few times without locking, so you find out exactly where everything needs to be and get all details perfect, then lock and voila!

Bert

[Ronald_Keller@adobeforums.com]

I use a slightly different approach. Instead of locking the prefs file I keep a copy of it as a backup. If needed I simply replace the corrupted one with the backup...

Ronald

[B. Philippus]

Ronald:

That works, except when I used to do that I'd still lose work occasionally when the prefs was getting bad...

Bert