Chapter 14 Problems getting R and RStudio up and running

90% of the time or more people can get R and RStudio up and running. However, there can be some weird issues. Below are some ideas for troubleshooting. I encourage you to read through all of them to get oriented to all the possible solutions before you select one.

Solution 0: Do you have RStudio AND the base R program downloaded? Do you have the current version (R vs. Mac) of BOTH R and RStudio downloaded?). Sorry, need to ask. You get R from the CRAN website (PC download: bit.ly/CRANwindows; Mac download: bit.ly/CRANmac) and RStudio from the RStudio website.

14.1 Solution 1: Use RStudio Cloud (short-term solution)

This is a short-term solution, since free accounts only provide 15 hours per month. This will let you dabble and get some things done while you troubleshoot things.

14.2 Solution 2: Use the base R program (medium-term solution)

If RStudio isn’t working the basic R program may still be ok. You can probably fix this by re-downloading the R program - see the next solution for details. But, if you just want to get some coding done, you can use the base R program. Note that the R icon is a dark blue “R” , while the RStudio Icon is a light blue circle with a white “R” .

14.3 Solution 3: Update an old version of R

Sometimes RStudio doesn’t play nice with older versions of R. If you used R before and just downloaded RStudio for the first time, download R again, then see if RStudio works. PC download: bit.ly/CRANwindows; Mac download: bit.ly/CRANmac.

14.4 Solution 3: Address common problems

There are some common problems when downloading R and RStudio or trying to run them for the first time. If you are a student your school’s computer services or IT deChapterment can probably help you with this.

  1. Are your security settings preventing download? Dial back them back / turn them off temporarily.
  2. Do you need to install updates? New versions of R and RStudio play the nicest when your computer is up to date.
  3. Do you need to update your OS? If your operating system (OS) is very old it may be possible to get R running (see below), but it’s easiest if you update the OS. If you are a student your may be able to get this software for free.
  4. Did you download R and/or RStudio to a network drive rather than your hard drive? Executable software usually needs to be installed on your computers hard drive, not a shared network drive or location in the cloud such as OneDrive.

14.5 Solution 4: See the full Troubleshooting Guide

An in-depth troubleshooting guide is included in this book.