Godot installation errors: cache directory path, EditorSettings config path

Question

I am using Windows 7. After installing Godot from a browser, I get two errors:

OpenGL ES 3.0 Renderer: GeForce GTX 980/PCIe/SSE2
ERROR: EditorSettings::create: Cannot find path for cache directory!
   At: editor\editor_settings.cpp:756
ERROR: EditorSettings::save: Cannot save EditorSettings config, no valid path
   At: editor\editor_settings.cpp:934

I am new to game engines, and I don't really understand what these errors mean. I had a similar problem with Unity before I gave up on it.

Edit 01:
If it helps any, when I try to open a demo project in Godot, it crashes and suggests I use Visual Studio to debug it. If I do this, the Visual Studio debugger reports this:

Unhandled exception at 0x0000000140003F05 in Godot_v3.0.2-stable_win64.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x0000000000000000.

Answer 1

After buying the book Sams Teach Yourself Godot Engine Game Development written by Ariel Manzur and George Marques, I have come across the solution, though I don't believe I can fully articulate what the problem actually is.

From the book:

Godot usually stores the user settings in a global folder for the user profile (%APPDATA% on Windows, ~/.local/share on Linux, and ~/Library/Application Support on macOS). If you are running multiple versions or want a portable mode this behavior might not be desired. To fix this, you can run the editor in a self-contained mode. This is easily accomplished by adding an empty file called ._sc_ (or just _sc_ if you're on Windows) in the same folder as the executable. Godot will then create an editor_data folder in the same place where all the settings will be stored. Note that temporary files are also stored there, so the folder can become quite heavy if there are many projects or big ones.

I inserted this _sc_ file into my Program Files folder where I stored the Godot application. From this point, I must launch the program in Administrator mode every time I use it. I am able to avoid my previous launching errors in this way, and the program no longer crashes.

Comments

It's most likely a permissions issue... regardless the solution worked flawlessly... so a big thanks for that...

As a side note... if you were install to a directory other than one of the windows "protected" directories... program files... program files(x86)... etc... for example to the root directory c:\godot or your documents file C:\Users\yourusername\Documents\godot you would not need to run as administrator each time...

Cheers