I have been using Obsidian without issues, but recently, whenever I try to open a specific vault, the screen goes completely black screen and becomes unresponsive.
Other vaults open just fine, so Iam not sure what’s causing this. I have tried disabling community plugins, switching themes, and even reinstalling Obsidian, but the problem persists for this particular vault.
Has anyone encountered this before? Could it be a corrupted file or a plugin conflict? Any troubleshooting tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Thanks for the response! I tried reinstalling Obsidian, but the black screen issue persists for this specific vault. Other vaults work fine. I’ve also disabled all plugins and switched themes, but no luck. Are there any specific files I should check or reset? Appreciate any further guidance. Thanks!
Do all I say here on a COPY of the vault, not the original vault !!
Some potential culprits to your rather strange problem (in no particular order):
A: The cache of that vault is faulty somehow
B: Plugins and/or themes are misbehaving
C: Other parts of the .obsidian configuration is faulty
D: Some files in your vault causes this to happen
How did you disable the plugins, switch themes and so on, if you can’t open the vault? And which operating system are you on? And what do your Show debug info screen show?
Faulty configuration
The first attempt at addressing the first three items, would simply be to rename/remove the .obsidian folder of the copy of the vault you’re testing. This do require to use open the vault as a folder, and if it opens to re-add any community plugins and/or themes (possibly with some configuration as well). It is however a good first step to try (on a copy) as you can eliminate many of the possible culprits.
If you get your test vault up by removing the .obsidian folder, you could either just do the manual labour of adding the plugins or themes, or potentially you could try to copy bits and pieces from the old.obsidian folder. Not sure what feels the best for you.
Faulty source files
If on the other hand, you still have issues opening the vault, it might be the last reason related to files in the vault. What I would suggest in this variant, is simply to keep a few copies of the vault folders around; 1) The original (which you don’t touch), 2) The copy original and 3) The test copy. Remove some folders at random from the test copy, and see what you need to remove to be able to open the vault.
When you finally remove the faulty folder, add back the other folders from the copy vault to the test vault, and see if it still opens. Now you should have narrowed it down to one specific folder. If you got sub-folders in that folder, then copy the empty main folder, and then start adding sub-folders, one-by-one into it, and see when the vault fails to load.
If you got sub-folders in the sub-folders, you get the picture on rinse-and-repeat until you’re left with one folder causing the mayhem. Now you either just ditch that folder, or start working with adding/removing files of that folder, to further locate which component causes your issue.
Finally, I do need to re-iterate don’t do any of this on the original vault, just on copies of the vault. If finally you find a file or folder which seems to be root cause, then and only then move that file or folder out of the original vault, and see if you’re back in busines.