Why does MATLAB hang on the splash screen and fail to start on Windows?

Why does MATLAB hang on the splash screen and fail to start on Windows?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This issue most of the time is due to MATLAB not being able to create the preferences directory in the default location. 

The default location for the preferences directory would be :

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB

In this example, replace <username> with your username. Windows has a shortcut to take you right to the Roaming folder, and it is:

%appdata%

Enter this shortcut in the search field located in your Start Menu (Windows 7), Start Screen (Windows 8.1) or Taskbar (Windows 10) and hit enter to jump right to the relevant Roaming folder.

Once you have accessed this directory, make sure that there is an existing directory that correlates with the release of MATLAB you are using. If one does not exist you will need to create an empty directory with the release name as it's name.

EXAMPLE: R2019b would be the name of the directory for the R2019b release. 

                   R2022b would be the name of the directory for the R2022b release.

Make sure to close and reopen the file explorer after making these directories to ensure that they were saved. 

Make sure that your user account can write to this location, otherwise you can change the default location to a directory you do have access to:

How do I change the MATLAB preferences directory location?

 

This issue can also be related to the following article: 

Why does MATLAB get stuck in the "Initializing" or "Busy" state or take a long time to start?

If you are still encountering this issue please Contact MathWorks support

http://www.mathworks.com/support/contact_us/index.html