I was having problems with Eclipse and tried a whole range of different suggestions that i found on the internet. After messing about with Eclipse and not getting anywhere, i decided that i better re-install it again so it is fresh out of the box. I did that following Mark's tutorial to the letter the same as last time. I got everything running again and imported my source code which consisted of just an icon and the 'My Home Screen Menu' with nothing else added to it. It seemed to compile ok with no errors and just warnings. I then proceeded to launch it in the emulator. Emulator launched with no problems. I went to the app launcher screen and... ...my app was no where to be seen! Had a look at the console thing on Eclipse and got the error message... [2012-01-05 01:49:43 - 1.5 test] Failed to install 1.5 test.apk on device 'emulator-5554! [2012-01-05 01:49:43 - 1.5 test] (null) [2012-01-05 01:49:43 - 1.5 test] Launch canceled! So i sat there shaking my head thinking what should i do now? I then rememberd someone on the forum mentioning a logcat so i googled for a bit and managed to access the logcat which gave me a big list of stuff that i did not understand. Not knowing what to do next, i thought i might as well shake my head from side to side for a bit to illustrate my feelings of complete failure. After taking care of the head shaking i decided to take one last look at the emulator and gaze upon what could have been, but which not had been... and lo and behold it was there! Mingling with the other icons like it had always been there. I dont know where it came from, i dont know how he got there, but it had managed to sneak in when i wasnt looking. Now im not complaining about how it got there. To be quite honest i dont care how it got there, and i dont care how it will get there in the future as long as it gets there. All i want to know is why does it insist on messing with my head and playing conjouring tricks on me like David Copperfield? Why cant it behave? Am i mistreating it somehow? Its almost 2.30am here in the UK. I need to wake up at 7am in the morning! I just hope i make and launch a 1.5v app on the marketplace before this thing finally kills me. Going to bed now. Lets hope tomorrow is a better day! Goodnight everyone.

That made me laugh, congratulations, very good.

Super funny, great commentary. So, this does happen from time to time, it's not just you! I'm normally not an Android or iOS hater or lover but do struggle everyday to understand how Apple's compiler and 'app building process' is soooo much more reliable than Android + Eclipse + Java. I'm convinced it's a matter of tons of different idea merged into one. Again, Google, Android, Samsung, Motorola, HTC, Eclipse, Sun Micorsystems, etc, etc compared to Apple and only Apple. Hardware, Software, OS, Compiler. It's all Apple and very very reliable. With that being said, there are strengths of Android (compared to iOS) but the development process is not a strength. The emulators are very very unreliable, don't provide a genuine simulation of a real device (no shake, no zoom, no pinch, nothing more than an emulator that runs SOME layout code) and certainly don't manage 'apps' very well. What I've found is that 100% of the time app's installed on emulators will always show up in the Applications List. They will not always show up on the home screen or launch screen or anywhere else you may expect them. But, sometimes they do. Really, this happens lots. This just means that you'll need to be patient with the Dev Tool and SDK we all suffer through when compiling and packaging for Android but it does get easier, really, it does. What I used to spend days on (pounding my fists and cursing out loud) I only spend moments on now. This is because I've gotten intimate with the quirks, process, and limitations. Stick with it, it's worth it ;-)

I don't know if this helps, but I find that eclipse is way more reliable if every other application and non essential running service on my pc, including internet, is closed down. This is very apparent when trying to run the emulator, when simply minimizing eclipse will often cause the emulator to fail to load. Also, and this is also very regular, the emulator may fail to load a number of times, then the next time it loads with no problems. To me it seems to be a very fragile application, the smallest most inconsequential 'thing' causes it to fail.

Hi Raveyd, Thanks for the tip. I will try it out.