[news.eclipse.newcomer] Eclipse crashes at startup

[konrad.hinsen@xxxxxxx (Konrad )]

Eclipse build 20090619-0625
MacOS 10.5.8
Installed extensions: JDT, CDT, Pydev, TeXlipse, clojure-dev, Mercurial 
Eclipse

I am having some problems with my Eclipse installation and I hope someone 
can help me.

I installed Eclipse (downloaded prebuilt Eclipse for MacOS) under an 
administrator account, but plan to use it from my personal account that 
has no administrator privileges. But while Eclipse seems to work fine for 
the administrator account, I cannot get it to work under my personal 
account.  When I start Eclipse, I always (except the first time) get the 
error message

Could not create the view: Plug-in "org.eclipse.jdt.ui" was unable to 
instantiate class 
"org.eclipse.jdt.internal.ui.packageview.PackageExplorerPart".

Googling around made me discover the log files that contain more detail, 
but I can't really do much with that. First, I deleted $HOME/.eclipse and 
my workspace directory, and then created a new one. Then I started 
Eclipse, without any error message. But the log already shows a problem:

!SESSION 2009-09-09 20:40:54.289 
-----------------------------------------------
eclipse.buildId=I20090611-1540
java.version=1.5.0_20
java.vendor=Apple Inc.
BootLoader constants: OS=macosx, ARCH=x86, WS=cocoa, NL=en_US
Framework arguments:  -product org.eclipse.epp.package.java.product 
-keyring /Us
ers/hinsen/.eclipse_keyring -showlocation
Command-line arguments:  -os macosx -ws cocoa -arch x86 -product 
org.eclipse.epp
package.java.product -keyring /Users/hinsen/.eclipse_keyring -showlocation

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.registry 2 1 2009-09-09 20:40:55.915
!MESSAGE Problems parsing plug-in manifest for: "org.eclipse.ant.core".
!SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.registry 2 1 2009-09-09 20:40:55.915
!MESSAGE Parsing error in "plugin.xml" [line 1, column 0]: "URI was not 
reported
to parser for entity [document]".
!STACK 0
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: URI was not reported to parser for entity 
[docume
nt]
       at gnu.xml.aelfred2.SAXDriver.warn(SAXDriver.java:934)
       at 
gnu.xml.aelfred2.SAXDriver.startExternalEntity(SAXDriver.java:631)
..

Quitting and restarting Eclipse yields the error message quoted initially. 
The log now says

!ENTRY org.eclipse.equinox.registry 2 1 2009-09-09 20:40:56.737
!MESSAGE Problems parsing plug-in manifest for: 
"org.eclipse.cdt.managedbuilder.
core".
!SUBENTRY 1 org.eclipse.equinox.registry 2 1 2009-09-09 20:40:56.737
!MESSAGE Parsing error in "plugin.xml" [line 1, column 0]: "URI was not 
reported
to parser for entity [document]".
!STACK 0
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: URI was not reported to parser for entity 
[docume
nt]
       at gnu.xml.aelfred2.SAXDriver.warn(SAXDriver.java:934)
       at 
gnu.xml.aelfred2.SAXDriver.startExternalEntity(SAXDriver.java:631)

..


Unfortunately all this doesn't tell me anything. But I am wondering at the 
differences between the administrator account and the user account. In the 
administrator account, there is no $HOME/.eclipse. But there must be 
configuration information outside my workspace directory, because the 
workspace directory itself is always remembered.

I'd be grateful for any hints for exploration of this problem - and of 
course for solutions!

Konrad.