Problem

IntelliJ IDEA fails to start with the following error:

Solution

It might happen due to non-ASCII chars in a path to the IDE .vmoptions file. Try to move the IDE installation itself to a different location on a hard drive without non-ASCII chars along with all IDE System / Plugins / Logs / Config directories as described here: https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/articles/207240985-Changing-IDE-default-directories-used-for-config-plugins-and-caches-storage

Related part:

Follow the comments in IDE_HOME\bin\idea.properties file to change the defaults, make sure to uncomment the lines defining these properties:

• idea.config.path
• idea.system.path
• idea.plugins.path
• idea.log.path

Example:

idea.config.path=c:/work/idea/caches/trunk-config idea.system.path=c:/work/idea/caches/trunk-system idea.plugins.path=c:/work/idea/caches/trunk-plugins