Hi! I've seen a few other posts here saying other people are getting the similar message on opening Inkscape, that the preferences.xml file is not valid. I keep getting that, but the file doesn't exist. I've tried following the path and searching my computer but I can't find any preferences.xml file

Full text from the error message is:

"The preferences file C:\users\(name)\AppData\Roaming\inkscape\preferences.xml is not a valid XML document.
Inkscape will run with default settings, and new settings will not be saved."

Any help here would be greatly appreciated! I can find C: > users > (name) > Roaming - but no inkscape file otherwise even searching my computer, and no AppData file 

Describe your OS & version, the version of Inkscape and the installer you used.

I'm using Windows 10, Version    10.0.18363.

I think Inkscape is version 1.0-x64 (I'm not entirely sure how to read the version there), and used the Inkscape Setup Wizard. I've tried running the setup wizard to repair anything it thought was off but that didn't help.

Thank you for your help here!

Update: I just uninstalled Inkscape, installed the updated version 1.0.1 with the Windows Installer Package without success. I tried uninstalling that and I'm installing with .exe now

In the System page of the Preferences, there is a button to reset the User Preferences. I'd give that a try.

i had the same problem also and i fixed it by just resetting the preference settings, Go to Edit >> preferences >> system >> reset preference ( its the first item under system info) .

After the resetting the preference setting it should not show that error message again. Thanks

Resetting Preferences seems to have worked for me.

Resetting preferences have worked. Thank you very much.