Error “The connection to adb is down, and a severe

Question

I've spent days trying to launch any Android program. Even "Hello World" gives me the same error:

"The connection to adb is down, and a severe error has occurred".

I'm running Eclipse v3.5 (Galileo), Google APIs 2.2.8, on a Windows XP machine.

I've used all the tricks I can find on the web: the command line "adb kill-server", the DDMS "reset ADB", I started the emulator both before and after Eclipse, and searched for ports being used by other programs.

What is going on here? Is there a magic combination of versions of Eclipse, Java, ADB, emulator, and whatever else that works?

Answer 1

I found the path of the SDK (Preferences* → Android → SDK Location) was the cause. My SDK path was the following:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk

The spaces in the path is the problem. To get it to work, you must change Program Files (x86) to Progra~2

The complete right path is C:\Progra~2\Android\android-sdk.

Now it should work.

Answer 2

The previous solutions will probably work. I solved it downloading the latest ADT (Android Developer Tools) and overwriting all files in the SDK folder.

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Once you overwrite it, Eclipse may give a warning saying that the path for SDK hasn't been found, go to Preferences and change the path to another folder (C:), click Apply, and then change it again and set the SDK path and click Apply again.

Answer 3

Make sure it's not running in the task-manager processes. If so, end the process and then start it from a command prompt as in a previous answer. This worked for me.

Answer 4

I know this question has already been answered, but thought I might add that I found the problem to be folder permissions on my android-sdk directory.

I tested it out by granting Full Control to Everyone (dodgy, I know...), and the problem went away. I am not sure yet what the specific mix of permissions might be that it was looking for, but I assume some or other service in Eclipse didn't have execute permissions on adb.exe. That said, I'm a complete noob to this - just wanted to put it out there in case someone else had some insights into this.

I am running Windows 7, 64-bit, 4.2.0 Eclipse, and 20.0.0v201206242043 ADT.

Answer 5

I had the same problems, and it turned out that my antivirus program (Comodo) sandboxed the adb.exe, and that is why it didn't work. I closed the antivirus, and it worked just fine. Consider that.

Answer 6

This problem has been plaguing me for days until I finally figured out what was causing it. It got so bad I couldn't even update my apps even after trying all the above suggestions.

HTC Sync also runs a process called adb.exe. HTC Sync is an optional program available when installing the HTC USB driver. I had recently updated my installation of the HTC bundle and apparently hadn't installed HTC Sync before. Checking properties on adb.exe in the Task Manager showed it to belong to HTC Sync, not Android.

As soon as I uninstalled HTC Sync from the control panel the problem disappeared! (It's listed separately from the USB driver so that can stay.) I never saw more than one instance of adb.exe running. I'm curious to know if people having to kill the process from Task Manager, check to see if it's actually the Android process you are killing?

Please read user comments (I too have a HTC Thunderbolt): http://www.file.net/process/adb.exe.html