I’ve been using Eclipse PDT as my PHP editor of choice for some time now and it’s pretty neat.  I even started extolling it’s virtues to other developers…which is when it suddenly stopped working on my machine.  Which was slightly irritating because I really needed it working…

The precise problem was that when I tried to create a new PHP project, processor utilisation went through the roof and the program simply stopped working.  The only solution at this stage was to use Task Manager to stop the program.

I have a rather Neanderthal approach to resolving this sort of problem, as usual starting with removing the program and re-installing it.  This made no difference, and I started getting very annoyed.

The fix?

Well, the one thing that re-installing the Eclipse application doesn’t change is youir workspace.  By default this installs in Documents and Settings\<User Name> on XP, and sets up a folder called ‘workspace’.  I took my source code from this folder, then deleted the folder and re-started Eclipse-PDT.  This recreated the workspace and fixed the problem.