User:Pmw57/Minecrafthelp/Troubleshooting/lower part of the launcher has a black background

= Can't connect to minecraft.net, and lower part of launcher has a black background =

Problem
Cannot connect to minecraft.net when attempting to log in via the launcher, and the login section at the lower part of the launcher has a black background, instead of the normal dirt background.

A sample java error report for the problem is shown at http://pastebin.com/Mi2wrnvM

Cause
When you run a command prompt, you will see that the directory name for your account contains special characters in it. For example:

C:\Users\Mine!>

Having special characters in your windows username, or an exclamation mark at the end, breaks Java's ability to work with files needed for Minecraft.

This cannot be fixed by renaming your account username because the folder name for your windows account still remains with the same problem.

Solutions
There are a couple of solutions that can be applied.

Create a new user account without special characters
You can create a new user account, so that special characters are no longer in the directory name for your user. Just renaming your account is not effective, as that doesn't change the directory name.

Tell Minecraft to place the data files somewhere else
Another solution is to set the APPDATA location to somewhere else for the game.

You can do this with a batch file that changes the APPDATA location, and place the batch file along with minecraft.exe in a location that is outside of your user area: @echo off set APPDATA=. minecraft.exe

Minecraft Profile Fix program
You can run this profile fix file which moves the data files for you, creates a batch file, and places a shortcut to it on the desktop for you.

Download it and run it with administrator permissions.